Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley

Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear

Robin Wasley

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers · Hardcover · February 13, 2024

A Morris Debut YA Award Finalist A painfully average teen’s life is upended by a magical apocalypse in this “thrilling, moving, and fantastical” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel perfect for fans of The Raven Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Rest of Us Just Live Here.

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Who it’s for
A contemporary fantasy with a lean toward the eerie, built for easy immersion.
Genres
Zombies, Paranormal & Supernatural for Teens, Contemporary YA Fantasy
Published
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, February 13, 2024

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About this book

A Morris Debut YA Award Finalist A painfully average teen’s life is upended by a magical apocalypse in this “thrilling, moving, and fantastical” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel perfect for fans of The Raven Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Rest of Us Just Live Here. High school is hard enough to survive without an apocalypse to navigate.

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Sid Spencer has always been the most normal girl in her abnormal hometown, a tourist trap built over one of the fault lines that seal magic away from the world. Meanwhile, all Sid has to deal with is hair-ruining humidity, painful awkwardness, being one of four Asians in town, and her friends dumping her when they start dating each other—just days after one of the most humiliating romantic rejections faced by anyone, ever, in all of history. Then someone kills one of the Guardians who protect the seal. The earth rips open and unleashes the magic trapped inside. Monsters crawl from the ground, no one can enter or leave, and the man behind it all is roaming the streets with a gang of violent vigilantes. Suddenly, Sid’s life becomes a lot less ordinary. When she finds out her missing brother is involved, she joins the remaining Guardians, desperate to find him and close the fault line for good. Fighting through hordes of living corpses and uncontrollable growths of forest, Sid and a ragtag crew of would-be heroes are the only thing standing between their town and the end of the world as they know it. Between magic, murderers, and burgeoning crushes, Sid must survive being a perfectly normal girl caught in a perfectly abnormal apocalypse. Only—how can someone so ordinary make it in such an extraordinary world?

Why It Hooks

A contemporary fantasy with a lean toward the eerie, built for easy immersion.

Come here for

  • contemporary fantasy tension
  • a quick, uncanny drift into the supernatural

Expect

  • YA pacing and emotional stakes
  • a home-and-family undercurrent

Where it sits

Zombies28%
Contemporary YA Fantasy24%
Paranormal & Supernatural for Teens24%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • YA Adoption Stories
  • Asian American YA
  • YA Supernatural Thrillers
Authors
Robin Wasley
Publisher
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published
February 13, 2024
Format
Hardcover
Reading lane
YA Adoption Stories