Otherworldly

Lukens (Spell Bound) impresses with this romantic adventure starring a skeptic and an excitable liminal being. Despite their family’s continued beseeching of a goddess, nonbinary 17-year-old Ellery Evans no longer believes in anything supernatural, especially since having to move to Solis City following five years of unending winter that ravaged their family farm. Their certainty wavers, though, when they intervene in an assumed kidnapping to rescue Knox, a regular at their restaurant job. Knox explains that he’s a familiar who helps humans with their magical bargains and is being hunted by shades who want the elixir of life his previous patron brewed. To protect Knox, Ellery enters a magical bargain and promises to help Knox experience human life if Knox uncovers the cause behind the perpetual winter. Following a dangerous discovery, Knox is yanked back to the realm of the goddess and has his memories wiped of everything he experienced in Solis City, even Ellery, prompting them to concoct a bold plan. Lukens’s signature blend of complex yet accessible mythology, queer-normative worldbuilding, and high emotional stakes makes for a compulsively readable tale. Characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)