Shadow’s Edge

Adult author Lipinski’s third book is her first foray into YA fiction. The concept is intriguing: while a symbiotic relationship between humans and faeries has been explored before, the notion that a human is necessary as a “shaman” for the Other raises all sorts of possibilities—none of which Lipinski explores. Shaman Leah Spencer is like a multitude of teenage protagonists with an unwilling connection to the nonhuman, and much of the first hundred pages of the novel is devoted to new school woes, football games, drunken partying, and romantic entanglements. Lipinski’s propensity to have Leah Think In Capital Letters and strain after witty exaggerations (“Despite feeling slightly like I’d been abducted and helicoptered to a parallel universe...”) makes it feel as though she’s trying too hard to create a credible teenage protagonist. Leah is eventually drawn back to her Other roots by murder and discord between the Light and the Dark Créatúir, which only Leah, of course, can resolve. It’s a pleasant, predictable excursion that doesn’t live up to its potential. Ages 12–up. Agent: Waxman Literary Agency. (Jan.)