FLY BY NIGHT

Will a teen be able to find her missing sister and save a local forest from development?

Eighteen-year-old Dee Ramirez’s twin sister, Beth, is missing. For the last six years, the girls have lived separately and grown distant—Dee moved out with her police officer father, while Beth remained with their mother. With Beth’s disappearance, Dee and her father are back in the family home, and Dee is attending Beth’s school and learning as much as she can about her life. As Dee tries to piece together clues about Beth’s disappearance, she also becomes invested in a cause Beth cared deeply about: fighting against the Redline Central Gas Company, a shady corporation determined to run a pipeline through the pristine pinelands Beth loved. With her best friend, Tobi, and Beth’s boyfriend, Lucas, Dee explores the pinelands, positive that clues to her sister’s fate must be out there. In a sharp supernatural twist, Dee encounters something otherworldly in the woods that she cannot explain but feels can help. Drawing upon a mix of contemporary environmentalism and paranormal mystery and populated with a believable cast of characters, this genre-defying thrill ride will appeal to a wide audience. The resolution may leave a bit to be desired, but the journey is filled with edge-of-your-seat creepiness. O’Connor positively portrays characters of diverse body shapes and sizes; Dee and her family’s surname cues them as Latinx. Lucas appears White, and the supporting cast is multiracial.

A buzzworthy eco-thriller.