Knowing Who I Am (the series)
Knowing Who I Am (Book 1)
Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt like the person staring back at you was a total stranger? Like there's this indescribable otherness about yourself that you can't quite put your finger on?
Faith "Rosie" Miller — a troubled teen still reeling from an unimaginable tragedy years prior. After losing her mother and brother in a fatal car accident, Rosie's life has been a waking nightmare. With her emotionally distant father blaming her for their deaths, she's been neglected and left to fend for herself through petty crimes just to survive. Talk about a tough starting point for her!
But Rosie's dreary existence takes an exhilarating detour when she's unexpectedly recruited by the mysterious Frank into Shallow River Academy — a secret training facility for elite spies and operatives.
As Rosie begins her intense operative training, she starts manifesting wildly extraordinary abilities — superhuman strength, blinding speed, accelerated healing, genius-level cognitive powers. It turns out her late mother was part of a controversial, top-secret program to genetically engineer an advanced new breed of human weapon… and Rosie may be the ultimate product of these experiments, codenamed "Trinity 5000."
★★★★★
“Knowing Who I Am is more than just a showcase for flashy superhuman feats. At its emotional core, it's a rich, wonderfully nuanced character study of a traumatized girl still grappling with grief, neglect, and abandonment after her family tragedy. Rosie's existential struggle over whether she's actually human or just a science experiment crafted in a lab cuts deep. We've all felt that gnawing self-doubt over our identities at some point, and Allen taps into that with striking poignancy.”
— The Bookish Elf (Goodreads review)
Becoming Me (Book 2)
Shallow Rivers is home for Faith Rosie Miller, but her return hasn’t gone the way she envisioned. Grappling with the truths of her painful past, she only wants to be left alone, but unfortunately, Arnold is dying to know more about her and will do anything to find out who she is.
Faith’s guard is up, and trusting anyone, even the two men she loves, becomes a challenge. On her journey as a student at Shallow Rivers, she has uncovered her mother’s secrets and needs to tell someone, but she has to put that on hold when she learns that the Ethosien Games, the event the school’s level 2 students enter, is going to take place earlier than expected, making it hard for her to focus on anything else but that and to know who she can trust.