Midnighters, Volume 1

Jessica Day is a new student at Bixby High School. Rex Green, 16, has very bad eyesight and is unpopular. He sort of dresses in a goth fashion. He notices something odd about Jessica, that her body is in focus even when he removes his glasses.

Rex talks to a girl named Dess, who is “one of them.” That night Jess wakes up at midnight when a rainstorm seems to stop. She goes outside, and there is a bluish light everywhere and the raindrops have stopped falling; they are just hanging suspended in the air. She thinks at first it was all a dream, but the next morning she finds proof that it wasn't.

Another girl who knows Rex and is one of “them” is Melissa. She seems to mentally sense thoughts and feelings, almost overwhelming her with their intensity. She says she had sensed Jessica during the “blue hour” .

Later, time stops again for Jessica. A cat comes to her then runs away and acts like it wants her to follow. Jessica also sees a very large, very dark moon. The cat changes into a snake and she's surrounded by snakes. She escapes those, then is confronted by a large panther.

Jessica finds out about the midnight time and the creatures that live in it, and that she is somehow herself stranger than the other midnighters.

Jessica meets Jonathan, another midnighter but one who is not part of the group. They go out at night and encounter yet another darkling. They end up getting chased but manage to outwit their pursuers.

The story then proceeds to reveal that the creatures of the dark are after Jessica. They want her dead. The reason they do is that she has a power which is revealed to her late in the book, a power that can challenge the darklings in their own world.

This is a very good book, quite different, interesting, and basically a page-turner. I'm looking forward to the other two volumes in the series.

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