The Girl in the Box Series, Books 1-3: Alone, Untouched, and Soulless: The Girl in the Box, Books 1-3

I want to meet my book reading challenge for the year so I was looking at books to read through Amazon and stumbled on a collection of three books for free entitled The Girl In The Box series. I opened the first book and began to read. The author hooked me with the first words of the main character ("when I woke up there were two men in my house") and with rules, from her mom, that she had memorized and lived by for the last twelve years. The young lady tells us she is 17 but will be 18 in one month. Within ten minutes she had broken the first three to four rules and was out the door on her adventure. HOOKED ME in! I immediately had my granddaughter download these books on her Kindle so we could read and share our thoughts with each other.The young lady had not been away from her home, or had contact with another human, other than her mom, whose been gone over a week, in twelve years. She fights the two men, takes gun from older man and with gun pointed gets into a car with a stranger, who smiles as they drive away...The young lady, Sienna Nealon, lands at a facility for special people as herself. She quickly learns she has a foe (Wolfe) who taunts her by calling her Baby Doll. He wants to take her to his "people" but she gets under his skin where he wants her for self. In order to get her to come to him, he goes on a killing spree, killing hundreds of people while waiting for her to succumb to his wishes.Liked this!! I found some errors in writing, but the story telling was a bit different. Glad I have the other two books, so I can continue with the adventure.Rule #4, "not allowed to wander around the house without being fully dressed, down to having on gloves at all time" makes sense to Sienna at the end of this book.Book about a young lady discovering who she is, what are her capabilities, and her place in society/community all the while coming out from being ALONE for the past twelve years. Where is her mom???Book #2:continues with the coming out/becoming aware by the main character Sienna. At the start of the book we're introduced to a character from 1908 Russia named Aleksandr Gavrikov. This book gives us more insight to these special people and the different interactions between them and Sienna, Kurt, Zack and others at the agency Directorate.In this book Sienna is dealing with the fact of not being Touched. I can't imagine what life was like for this soon to be eighteen year old whose been alone (except for a mom) in a locked house/box for the better part of twelve years and now discovering that it's best that she doesn't touch others, nor should they her without being under certain conditions/restraints. All the while, having to do battle with a slew of enemies and not ever really knowing whom to trust. So sad. And on top of all of this her mom is still missing! I appreciated the fact that the writer had Sienna engage with the agency psychologist, Dr. Zollers, as they delve into some very disturbing, troubling, deeply emotional, traumatic events in her life. How to deal with the voices was a concern of mine. Their relationship was useful in helping us to get to know the inner workings of Sienna and how she had to interact with the world around her.Mr. Crane did a better job of writing for this book, than he did in book #1. I was better able to follow along with the story telling and at times on edge waiting to see how things were being developed. I enjoyed just the simple things in his writing like Sienna at the mall for the first time and wondering what a mannequin was...childlike,...priceless!Sienna witnessed a persephone-type special person ability to give life, while she declared..."I'm death!" Heartfelt story and yes, I would recommend this book, but please read book #1 first.The last paragraph teased well and had me interested in getting started with book #3.Book #3:of the Girl In the Box series opens up with a character who will play a prominent place in the continuing adventure of Sienna Nealon, a "special" person who lives and works at the Directorate, an organization that helps track/police metahumans. [This is the same way book #2 started out. Will this be the pattern for the rest of the books in the series? I guess this can be a good signature style, but unpredictability works as well...just saying.] At the end of book #2 we learned that Sienna had made contact with a family member she didn't know she had. Now she is not so alone as she was in book #1.Sienna has grown up a little in this book. She is more confident and learning to be more independent/interdependent. She and two other rookies, Scott and Kat, are given their first assignment, with FBI badges and driver licenses that have them about five years older than they truly are. They set out on this adventure to solve the crime of convenient store robbings by someone who has injured people, but leaves them with no recollection of the crimes.This book is more action packed, and gives us more information about other enemy organizations. We're getting a glimpse of why the Alphas, Omegas and others are after Sienna and her importance to them and the Directorate. There is so much going on in this book and entices us to get the next book in series to continue the adventure. [I've already purchased books #4 and #5]This may be classified as a Young Adult book (really don't know how these books are classified, but just guessing), but this woman of 59 yrs is enjoying the adventures and looks forward to each book in the series. This also gives me an opportunity to share what we've read and learned with my grandchildren. I like how they are learning about Roman, Greek and other mythologies. Great way to educate on the sly.I recommend this series of books for those interested in science fiction, mythologies and reading about superhumans. This book was rightly titled Soulless. Tease...did Sienna find her mom? And what about following the rules?? Good stuff!

I really enjoyed the first 3 books of this series. It's refreshing and different from what I normally read. Well written, engaging and quick!

I really enjoyed reading this novel and the first two before it. When I read the synopsis for all three stories I thought maybe the story line would be a little too aimed towards the "teen" crowd and I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it. But I became so involved with the characters in the stories that I read all three books in as many days and am looking forward to the next books in the series. The story line was very different from anything I have read before. I've watched movies with "mutants" and although I liked them it was nothing compared to the way this author made all of it seem a lot more realistic and plausible. I got pretty involved with the main character, everything about her is so real. Besides the normal teenage angst, this girl survived unspeakable abuse from her own mother. BEING locked in a house, alone and afraid that her mother might not return this time is just the tip of the iceberg for this poor young girl. Not only was she abandoned and has no idea why, she starts developing abilities that she didn't know she had, abilities she is pretty sure other normal girl don't . What hurts her the most is finding out that her mother had been lying to her all her life, had kept huge secrets from her about what she is and all this has left her questioning if anything in her life was real and doubting whether or not her mother ever actually loved her. She has grown into a young woman with no experience of any kind of the world just outside her front door. She knows that there's something very different about herself and that she has come to a crossroad in her life where she needs to choose which way to go, what will she be and what will she believe. It doesn't take long for her to see has her future thrust upon her and has no choice in which direction her life is to go. The story line is fascinating, Heart breaking, imaginative, futuristic, fast paced, thought-provoking and will keep your interest peaked wanting to know what happens next. THEN will start it all over again.. S. has a biting, sarcastic sense of humor and brings you into her world where you find yourself fighting with her to just figure out how not just survive the next moment...But to live it. I believe this book would be great for almost any one over the age of 12/13 yrs. it does have quite a bit of violence in it and a little sexual content so I guess you just need to know your own child's level of maturity in handling the content in this series of books. For me I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to try something a little out of their comfort zone and everyone who loves this genre. I was incredibly surprised to find myself enjoying every minute of the story and unable to put down the books till I had finished all three of them. NOW I need to get the next three books in the series...because I am hooked!. Thanks Robert Crane for introducing me to a genre I never thought I would enjoy reading. I'm pretty sure it's not just the content that convinced me to reject my g that all mutants, vampyres, and other weird or dead characters are too impossibly unrealistic for me to enjoy reading about. He has a way of drawing you into the story, bringing the characters to life, dragging you deeply into the characters emotional highs and lows until you have unknowingly developed a vested interest in the characters you have become intimately familiar with and their stories.

Couldn't put it down. Fast paced and very enjoyable. Looking forward to continuing the series. There are 54 in this series. That is wonderful

I'm a sucker for a super hero story. This a pretty good one. You can tell Siena is being written by a man, it's still a good story though.

I have read all three books. One can see where the plot line goes, but there were readable enough. However, I must point out I read them because they were for free and have not intention of buying the rest. They are just not worth the money.I do like to read some no brainers now and then, and I did enjoy the Sanctuary series. However, it is obvious the writer has realised that it is more profitable to write very short stories for the price of a longer book, and I prefer to reward effort.

These books really are superb if you can dedicate the time to the whole series. I am 28 books in and they are superb.In my opinion they progressively improve and you follow the character development over years.I highly recommend this first three and the remaining books in the series to really appreciate what they are. By far the best series of books I have read and years on I am still reading later than I'd planned, as I can't put them down!

The girl in box starts as it means to go on in spectacular fashion. Sienna has never been outside the house and has never met anyone but her mother. Suddenly her house is being invaded by strangers and the rules her mother has drilled into her through years of isolation and training are gone.Sienna finds herself in a compound run by the Directorate and struggles to trust anyone as she goes through a journey of discovery to find out the truth about herself and her mother. Monsters, supernatural powers and strength makes her an ideal candidate for the Directorate to recruit but Sienna is unsure of them.These books are Hunger Games meets Avengers meets typical coming of age book. It is powerfully written and the characters are relatable but the author is letting the books and especially young Sienna down by not making her complete. It seems unlikely that a 17 year old girl who has never spoken to anyone but her mother and has had minimal exposure to the world through time limited viewing would have the vocabulary, street smarts and social skills of the Sienna we meet. However, it seems churlish to be complaining about THAT being the unbelievable part of a book about superhumans, succabuses and godlike powers.

There are some gripping bits to this: the opening is very good, the worldbuilding works, there's a nice sense of mystery, and the girl's 'type' makes a refreshing change, etc. But, for me, the story is massively spoiled by the author's failure to properly plan the main character. She isn't likeable. She's incredibly rude to everyone around her, and the other characters react as if this is witty when it rarely is. She does really stupid stuff. Yes she feels a lot of teenage angst and guilt but that isn't enough to make her likeable. You feel sorry for her at first, but this quickly wears thin until she's just irritating. A shame because with a better edit and a few adjustments this could have been a very good book. As it was, I only carried on reading because I was stuck in a dark room trying to get my son to sleep.

I do not read many books at all, these days in fact you can count them on one hand in a year. This has been mainly due to having to read for work legal documents and laws etc, to the point I basically only read for pleasure while away on holidays. However I recently became the owner of this Amazon Fire, which came with a lot of books that my wife had read in the passed. I started looking through them all and came upon this title, I opened the book and started reading, 3 hours later I put it down as I fell asleep reading it, I continued to read it as often as I had spare moments to do so, it has taken me a little longer than normal to finish the box set. For that reason I never bother to read books these days, as I like to finish in one go or in a few days tops, but this box set kept my interest and kept me coming back day after day for over three weeks, which it took me to complete them all in my down times. That is the first time I have felt like this about a book in many a year now. Wonderful writing great story lines I look forward to reading the next seven in this serious.