THIS TOWN IS NOT ALL RIGHT

All is not as it seems in the coastal Maine town to which 12-year-old twins Beacon and Everleigh have been relocated by their dad.

A year after the accidental death of their older brother, Jasper, Beacon and his sister and father are still gripped by grief. (Their mother died when the twins were 1.) Their new home is a world away in every respect from Los Angeles, where Beacon had a social group of skateboarding friends and knew what to expect from his acerbic but honest twin. Uncanny, archetypically eerie events begin at once when they arrive in Driftwood Harbor, and though at first Everleigh agrees with Beacon that something is off with the oddly polite and orderly kids at school, the most extreme of whom belong to a club called the Gold Stars, she soon begins acting strangely too. Beacon’s struggle to piece together what is happening in the small town and his quickly found friendship with outcast Arthur render him an easily sympathetic third-person protagonist. Carefully paced unveiling of details will hold readers’ attention even though they are centered on familiar science-fiction tropes. All of the main characters are white, with some textual indicators of diversity in the background—such as mention that Nixon, a member of the Gold Stars, has dark skin and that Arthur is Jewish.

An engaging, plot-driven thriller that begs for a sequel.