In just a few months, 17-year-old Zoe Bissell's life has gone to hell--literally. Her beloved but "infuriatingly unreliable" father was killed in a caving accident, her grandparent-like neighbors are missing from their mountain cabin, and now her ridiculous eight-year-old brother, Jonah, has disappeared into the 15-below Montana blizzard with their dogs Spock and Uhura.
Miraculously, she finds Jonah in the snow and manages to carry him to her neighbors' cabin, staggering "like a drunken yeti." Suddenly they are face to leering face with the cruel, violent criminal "Stan the Man" who is inexplicably determined to drown their dogs in the nearby frozen lake. Magically, Spock and Uhura are saved by a beautiful, enigmatic stranger in a shimmering long blue coat from hell's Lowlands, a man Zoe later calls X ("for an unknown variable"). But just as X is about to drown the despicable Stan, Zoe stops him. Her actions--and X's--set in motion an epic supernatural drama that, for better or worse, will upend the lives of everyone involved.
Fantasy, romance, horror and sci-fi blend deliciously in Jeff Giles's gripping young adult series debut. Zoe is a thoroughly contemporary protagonist whose sardonic humor takes on an especially surreal quality when she's talking with people who live--or lived--in different centuries. X's exquisitely romantic sentiments--"If I do not return... it is only because not one but two worlds conspired to stop me"--are balanced by Zoe's wry matter-of-factness: "Well that's a little over-the-top." A gorgeous, unearthly ride. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor