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AFTERLIGHT

Readers will hold out hope for a second installment set in Lim’s richly imagined world.

A misfit Australian teen reluctantly pursues a strong connection with the dead to solve a murder.

After Sophie Teague’s parents die in a motorcycle accident, she carries on with life as best she can, helping her loving Gran run an unpretentious bar and hotel in an ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood of Melbourne, but remains poleaxed by grief. Though she switches schools for “a fresh start,” her lanky, 6-foot frame and brilliant mane of curly red hair render getting through her last year of high school under the radar an impossible dream. When a pleading, faintly malevolent spirit appears, wordlessly insisting that Sophie settle some karmic debts, the kindhearted teen does the right thing, even at great personal risk. Her good deeds result in brutal attention from the meanest girls in school as well as assistance and romance from Jordan, whose tough exterior belies a tender heart and considerable skill as a necromancer. As in her triumphant The Astrologer’s Daughter (2015), Lim carefully unspools her tightly plotted fantastical mystery with a reluctant, socially maladroit heroine and an unlikely partner at the center. Her insistent focus on murders of people at society’s fringes and the ability of teen girls to right truly foul injustices are both most welcome, though they don’t quite overcome the letdown of a too-hasty conclusion.

Readers will hold out hope for a second installment set in Lim’s richly imagined world. (Paranormal thriller. 14-18)

Pub Date: April 12, 2016

ISBN: 978-1925240-49-8

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Text

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
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A DOOR IN THE DARK

From the Waxways series , Vol. 1

Truly fantastic.

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2023


  • New York Times Bestseller

This dark fantasy duology opener has a magic school, a death, and five students who find themselves stranded in the wilderness.

Ren Monroe is a promising student wizard at Balmerick, a private school in the city of Kathor. Along with her best friend, Timmons, Ren is one of the few welfare students attending on a scholarship, and despite being one of the most accomplished people at the school, finding a placement in one of the top houses is proving difficult and is a hurdle in the way of the secret mission Ren has set out to accomplish. When a portal spell goes awry and Ren, Timmons, and four other students from different walks of life are thrown together into the Dires, an uncharted land where the last dragons lived, one of them ends up dead and the rest need to learn to work together to make their way back home before they succumb to the harsh environment or the terrifying revenant following them. This may well be the chance Ren was looking for to prove her worth. Placing elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system within the familiar trappings of a school for magic, this is a no-holds-barred tale of revenge, atonement, and the pursuit of justice set in a world diverse in skin color and social classes. Ren is a protagonist for the ages: equal parts smart, calculating, and ruthless, forming a lethal package as an avenging angel.

Truly fantastic. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Pub Date: March 28, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-66591-868-8

Page Count: 368

Publisher: McElderry

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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THE CHANGING MAN

A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.

After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.

Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.

A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023

ISBN: 9781250868138

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023

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