AWOKE

In Conte’s YA novel, a teenage girl rediscovers her ability to see and talk to ghosts after an unexpected encounter with a Grim Reaper.

Eighteen-year-old Bostonian Katya Stevens just wants to have one normal night with her friends, Amie Espinosa and Cynthia Maroney, without having to deal with recent visions of “things and people I had never seen before. Places I had never been to.” The earthquakelike tremors that tend to follow in their wake are even more disturbing. Soon after she arrives at Amie’s 18th birthday party at a bowling alley, she sees flashes of scenes featuring “sweaty, burly men” and piercing blue eyes. Her night gets even worse when an older Scottish man cruelly rejects Katya’s friend; Katya follows him outside to give him a piece of her mind. After she witnesses him fighting a rogue spirit in a deserted alley, she exhibits a strange new power. Gregor, who’s a Grim Reaper, then tells Katya about a largely unseen world of monsters and ghosts. When the deceased refuse to “cross over,” he says, they’re pursued by Wanters—malevolent creatures from another plane who can cause natural disasters when they appear in the human realm—and an increasing number of such events have occurred lately. Katya may have something to do with this situation, and she reluctantly agrees to accompany Gregor to “the other side” for answers. Conte weaves a fast-paced tale where Katya enters a whole new realm and finds a new appreciation of life, death, and the beyond. The author’s worldbuilding skills are impressive, with Conte revealing new information at a steady clip that keeps the pages turning. Katya is a strong-willed and likable protagonist, and readers will be engaged by how she slowly comes into her own as she finds out more about her true nature. That said, the rest of the cast isn’t as fully developed, which may put off readers who aren’t YA fantasy aficionados. The ending sets things up for a sequel, but the story stands well enough on its own.

A tale with steady worldbuilding and an engaging main character, aimed at genre fans.