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Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear

by Robin Wasley

An ordinary teen in a town split open by magic

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AlbakiReads Editorial

An ordinary teen in a town split open by magic

Sid Spencer’s familiar high-school troubles take a sharp turn when the magical seal beneath her tourist-trap hometown breaks. With monsters loose and the town cut off, she joins the remaining Guardians to search for her missing brother and try to close the fault line. The story pairs supernatural danger—living corpses, unruly forest growth, and violent vigilantes—with Sid’s concerns about friendship, rejection, and being one of few Asians in town. Its apocalypse unfolds on a local scale, through a teen caught between everyday social upheaval and a crisis threatening the whole community.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teen and young adult readers interested in supernatural YA fiction.
  • Readers who enjoy stories combining a magical crisis with high-school friendships and crushes.
  • Readers interested in an Asian American teen protagonist and themes of belonging.

Themes

Magic and apocalypseFriendship and rejectionBelonging and identityFamily ties

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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.

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?
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