After making a name for himself in self-publishing with his Greatfall series, Jason Gurley published a story about a girl called Eleanor who in 1985, lost her twin sister, Esme, in a car crash at the age of six. In the early 1990s, Eleanor, now a teenager, lives in the shadow of her sister's ghost, her family irrevocably unwound by Esme's death. The only brightness in her life comes from her longtime friend Jack, the one person she can trust.
In a different but intersecting world, two entities called Mea and Efah watch Eleanor. More than anything, Mea wants to pull Eleanor into her world. Mea resists trusting Efah, who wants to control her, but he promises to teach her how to bring Eleanor close to them. When Mea's early attempts fall short of their mark, Eleanor suddenly finds herself yanked out of her reality and into bizarre new realms. Although she's afraid to tell anyone about her experiences, Eleanor knows she is not hallucinating--not when her returns happen violently enough to send her to the hospital. As she is torn from our reality again and again, Eleanor travels unknowingly closer to the pain eating away at her shattered family.
Ethereal prose and off-kilter fantasy worlds wait around every bend as Eleanor gets caught up in forces beyond her control. Gurley flings genre boundaries to the wind and finds his own way through the intertwined threads of trauma, magic and love. By turns adventurous and contemplative but always heartfelt, Gurley's first foray into major publishing will surely not be his last. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads