DEAD THINGS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

When someone releases long-suppressed magic in her small town, Sid fights zombies to find her missing brother.

Seventeen-year-old Sid Spencer feels like she’ll always be a sidekick, never the main character. After growing up in Wellsie as a Korean adoptee with white parents (she and her Korean adopted brother, Matty, comprise half the town’s Asian population), she feels like a nobody. Wellsie is built on a fault line where “lingering energy manifests” as rainbowlike ghosts, drawing tourists. But when the fault line is ruptured, the released magic creates a zombie apocalypse, and Matty goes missing. His friend Brian reveals to Sid that they are Guardians, the magical chosen few who protect the fault line. Now Matty’s running from a magic-hungry killer, and Sid’s determined to find him. Joining Brian and the other Guardians, she ventures into an overgrown forest filled with the undead—and an armed man and his gang who want to release all the magic. While struggling with regular teenage issues like friendships and crushes, Sid must find a way to survive this new, earth-shattering reality and save her loved ones. This dark debut is a pitch-perfect balance of fantasy, horror, humor, and romance. The story is well paced, with action and suspense interspersed with quiet moments of raw emotion and human connection. The thoughtfully developed characters grapple with issues of race, insecurities, self-absorption, isolation, connection, family, loss, grief, and empathy.

A thrilling, moving, and fantastical apocalyptic novel that readers won’t want to put down.