Otherworldly
by F. T. Lukens
read by Em Grosland, Kevin R. Free, and Natalie Naudus
Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 11 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written November 19, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
This one charmed me. The prologue starts a bit creepily, with a witch making a bargain at a crossroads. She intends to bargain with a goddess, but instead three shades show up. The witch bargains away her soul in exchange for the secret of life – the ability to make a potion that will extend her life. When a magical familiar shows up to assist her, it’s not a cat or a bat, but a tall and handsome teenage boy.
Then chapter one of the book begins with Ellery, a teen who’s moved away from her family’s farm because after five years of winter, the farm is failing. Ellery’s impatient with her mother’s continued belief in the goddess, who clearly isn’t listening. Ellery is staying in the city with her cousin Charlie (a girl) and Charlie’s girlfriend Zada, and they’re working in the same diner as Charlie, running the dishwasher. As the book opens, Charlie alerts them that Hot Weird Guy is coming in – and we the readers recognize him as the familiar, Knox, picking up an order for the witch Arabella. Knox is friendly and open and waves at Ellery through the glass. He’s weird because he never wears clothes appropriate for the snowy weather, but he’s also definitely hot.
And then we switch to Knox’s perspective. The witch has a moment of triumph, realizing that Knox’s blood is exactly the ingredient her potion needs – and then the shades come and take her soul.
But Knox doesn’t want to go back to the Otherworld just yet, and he’s worried about how his queen (the goddess) hasn’t been answering his letters. Has she forgotten him? So he takes the potion and flees from the shades – and ends up running into Ellery in the dark behind the diner – and she ends up standing up to the shades, whom she thinks are people trying to kidnap him. Knox uses a last flash of magic and gets rid of them – for now.
Charlie and Zada are very kind people, so when Knox is obviously in trouble, they offer him a place to stay for a few days.
And that’s how Ellery gets embroiled in the otherworldly.
Knox has no magic without an active bargain, so Ellery and Knox make a bargain between themselves – Ellery will help him experience a list of fun things from the human world, and Knox will find out from supernatural sources why the winter has extended for five years.
Of course, that involves encountering more supernatural beings, which involves danger. And the having fun together indeed leads to falling in love – it’s beautiful to see.
But there are definite complications! If Knox goes back to the Otherworld, he will forget everything from the human world, because that’s his nature as a liminal being. And he will almost certainly be punished for running away from the shades. But Ellery’s not the kind of person who will let someone they love be unfairly punished.
I fell in love with the characters in this story, from Ellery the skeptic who’s still working hard to help their family, to sweet Knox, genuinely happy in human things, and to Charlie, who’s joyful chaos in human form. The story maybe sounds complicated when summarizing, but it all made sense as the book took you through it, with each complication leading to the next, and characters you wanted to keep spending time with.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/otherworldly.html
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