Born at Midnight

Sixteen-year-old Kylie Galen wants to believe it was a case of wrong place, wrong time that landed her in the Shadow Falls Camp for juvenile delinquents. She'd rather focus on big issues like her grandmother's death, her parents' divorce, and her ex-boyfriend's betrayal. Instead, she is surrounded by "freaks," who she's asked to believe are vampires, werewolves, and fairies. Kylie's ability to see ghosts doesn't make her a supernatural creature, too, does it? Hunter, who writes romance novels as Christie Craig, treads familiar territory by using a camp-cum-school for misunderstood magical youth as the setting for her first YA novel, which kicks off the Shadow Falls series. After the info-dump beginning, the story settles into an entertaining series of romantic quandaries and breathtaking revelations that propel Kylie on her quest to discover whether she is, indeed, human. The evolving, not-always-easy relationships among Kylie and her cabin mates Della and Miranda are rendered as engagingly as Kylie's angst over dangerous Lucas and appealing Derek. Just enough plot threads are tied up to make a satisfying stand-alone tale while whetting appetites for sequels to come. Ages 12–up. (Apr.)