Ultraviolet

In a change of pace from her Faery Hunters series, Anderson blends paranormal, science fiction, and scientific elements in an intriguing story about a teenager who is convinced that she’s crazy—and a murderer—though reality is even more unpredictable. Sixteen-year-old Alison Jeffries awakens in the psych ward of a hospital, and is soon transferred to a treatment center for “youth in crisis.” The police, meanwhile, believe Alison knows something about the disappearance of her classmate, Tori. She does. Alison had watched Tori disintegrate before her eyes, and she believes that her barely understood “powers” are to blame. With the help of Sebastian Faraday, a mysterious neuropsychologist, Alison starts to get answers: she is a synesthete—her senses of smell, taste, sight, and hearing intertwined in surprising ways—as well as a tetrachromat, able to perceive ultraviolet light. Alison’s conditions allow the author to give her some enviable abilities and use some creative descriptions (Faraday’s voice tastes, to Alison, like “[d]ark chocolate, poured over velvet). Anderson keeps readers guessing throughout with several twists, including a very unexpected divergence in the last third of the book. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)