The Beckoning Shadow
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From debut author Katharyn Blair comes a heart-stopping fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and The Young Elites, about a teenage runaway who enters a dangerous tournament with an impossible prize.
Vesper Montgomery can summon your worst fear and turn it into a reality—but she’s learned the hard way that it’s an addicting and dangerous power. One wrong move and you could hurt someone you love.
But when she earns a spot in the Tournament of the Unraveling, where competitors battle it out for a chance to rewrite the past, Vesper finally has a shot to reverse the mistakes that have changed her forever.
She turns to Sam Hardy, a former MMA fighter who’s also carrying a tragedy he desperately wants to undo. However, helping heal Sam’s heart will mean breaking her own, and the competition forces her to master her powers—powers she has been terrified of since they destroyed her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former cheerleader Vesper, 17, remembers her previous life: before she learned that she was an Oddity, before the fire that she inadvertently set took her home and nearly destroyed her family in Los Altos, and before she learned exactly what her powers as a Harbinger discerning and conjuring a person's worst fear could do. On the run, she ends up in San Francisco overnight and falls in with a group of teens, many also Oddities with powers that manifested the same time as her own. This acquaintanceship leads her to an underground gladiatorial tournament and a chance at undoing the past and returning to her former life. The more time she spends with her new friends, including Sam, the Baseline (nonmagical) boy she partners with for the tournament but plans to betray, the more she realizes that something darker is afoot. There's a shady past to the group who used to police Oddities but have since disappeared and their secrets threaten to overwhelm the present. Interweaving excellent worldbuilding with the uncertainties of discipline, friendship, and taking ownership of one's decisions, Blair's debut will entrance and delight in equal measure. Ages 14 up.
