BRIGHT MIDNIGHTS

In Delorme’s YA novel, a young woman encounters love—and danger—in her dreams.

In the second installment in her Limerent series, the author introduces readers to 17-year-old high school student Amelie, who has to deal with the shallow backbiting of the other girls at Mt. Morris School and the creepy feeling she gets from the school’s vice principal, Phillip Sawyer, who not-so-secretly lusts after her. Amelie also has to deal with her own health problems: “There was always something not quite right in her body and it could take multiple forms,” readers are told. “Headache, stomachache, indigestion, nerve pain, tonsilitis, cystitis, colitis ...” To cope with all of this, she tends to retreat into her own thoughts, and into the sprawling wonderland of her nighttime visions and dreams. “Bedtime meant flying inside her head, exploring other worlds and other galaxies”; “It was her bliss time.” This tenuous arrangement with reality is deeply complicated when she meets a teenage boy named Clovis who might be a werewolf, a figment of her imagination, or her first love—or all three. When Clovis introduces her to his world and its possibly inhuman, potentially deadly inhabitants, Amelie feels anxious—and, when it comes to Clovis’ steely friend, Rose, jealous: “If Clovis had a girlfriend—no, a lover—that was his business. It’s not like they were, what—dating.” As Amelie learns more about Clovis and his seemingly supernatural world, she inevitably begins learning more about herself.

Delorme is working here with very familiar YA templates, including the lovely-but-outcast “Girl Who’s the Key to Everything”; “mean girls” high school rivalries and outrages; the presence of a supernatural academy rife with intrigue; coarse or oblivious adults; the cocky, brooding hot boy who’s forever running his hand through his unruly hair; the meet cutes; the arch, old-fashioned settings (“the boy led her to an ornate burgundy Victorian settee”); and the transcendent power of love. Readers of series such as Twilight and Divergent will feel right at home. The author adds imaginative details of her own throughout, from clever allusions to Greek mythology (the code-name Amelie and Clovis work out for her is “Psyche”) to a continuing and sometimes ingenious intertwining of fantasy and science fiction. The central conceit of the novel—stories are actual places where realities can unfold—is effectively shaded by the fact that, when Amelie isn’t living in such alternate realities, she’s learning about them in classes, where unsuspecting teachers ironically tell her that the best authors bring readers into their stories and make readers love their characters. This dual-narrative cleverness, combined with some very simple and sometimes lovely prose (“The sky was blue with puffy white clouds and the air smelled of flowers and sugar”), keeps the reader involved right to the book’s satisfying (albeit predictable) climax. This is solid entertainment for the Court of Thorns and Roses crowd.

A page-turning YA novel about a girl who must reconcile her dream-dimensions with the real world.