Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds by Gwenda BondThe first official Stranger Things novel, this book begins well before the events of the first season. Terry Ives is a college student who fills in for her roommate at the newly built Hawkins Lab, where they are doing strange experiments involving dosing volunteers with LSD and trying to bring out hidden abilities. It's at the lab that Terry meets Alice, Ken, and Gloria, all members of the experimental group, as well as a five year old little girl called Kali...aka Subject 008. Terry starts to suspect that something sinister is going on at the lab...
and winds up pregnant with the girl we all come to know and love as Eleven, who is stolen from Terry at birth (as the show already explained to us in Season 2).
I really, really loved the book. Fast paced and engrossing, the Dr. Brenner presented on the page is just as evil and manipulative as he is in the show. The story fit perfectly, seamlessly lining up with the events we see in the actual show. I tip my hat to the author. I usually find novels based on shows to be less than stellar, way off character, or full of plot holes, and I found none of that in this book.
