Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear

November 6, 2023
In a world where magic was sealed away generations ago by an enormous rune created by fault lines, only the secretive Guardians can wield its power, which they use to protect the faults. Seventeen-year-old Sid Spencer, who lives in the small tourist trap town of Wellsie, leads a mundane life dodging crowds, avoiding her ex–best friend, and navigating her predominantly white community as an adoptee from Korea. When the fault line Wellsie rests upon splits, and ravenous, soulless zombies pour out, Sid is forced to hack and slash her way toward survival, struggling against increasingly horrific happenings to reunite with her friends and family, as well as grapple with revelations about the magic she’d been living on top of her whole life. Banding with a ragtag group of individuals striving to reseal the fault line, Sid uncovers her own hidden talents amid extraordinary circumstances. Though the plot sometimes feels unfocused, Wasley deftly juggles inventive worldbuilding with introspective ruminations on adoption, found family, and self-acceptance. A large and eclectic intersectionally diverse cast; fast-paced, brutal action; and thrilling reveals round out this genre-bending debut that is at once funny, terrifying, and heart-wrenching from start to finish. Ages 14–up. Agent: Janine Kamouth, WME.

Starred review from December 15, 2023
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. (Fantasy. 14-18)

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January 1, 2024
Grades 10-12 Ghosts of the long-closed magical fault lines are everywhere in the town of Llewellyn, called Wellsie; Sid just wishes they weren't so figurative. Wherever she looks, she sees the ghosts of past relationships, like the best friend who took Sid's crush, and the ghosts of the Korean family she never knew, having been adopted by the very white and perfect Spencers. Brian may have it worse, though: his father died recently, and he's become the kid everyone avoids because it's awkward. When the fault line reopens and starts spitting out actual zombies, Sid, a horror-movie fanatic, is panicked, but after several days of no human connection, she decides to venture out. Then Brian breaks into her house, looking for her also-adopted brother, Matty, who is apparently a legendary magical guardian. Sid grapples with dangerous magic, family secrets, and earth-shattering disaster. Wasley writes that this is her twentieth book written, but her first that's been published, and it's a solid debut. Sid, although scared, is engagingly clever while she picks her way through the strange emergency she's in.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.