Finding Jade

December 19, 2016
Jasmine Guzman expects her first day of ninth grade at a new school to be relatively uneventful, despite living with her terminally ill mother and mourning the disappearance of her twin sister, Jade, years ago. Jasmine’s assignment to Beaconsfield Collegiate, which has an unusually high number of twin students, begins of a series of events that challenges everything she knows. She, like many other twins, is actually a powerful Seer, responsible for protecting the world from demons, and she must find Jade, who now lives in the demon-riddled Place-in-Between. Though Payne’s (Since You’ve Been Gone) story takes place sometime in the future after much of the world has been ruined by climate change, leaving refugees to seek asylum, the setting is largely irrelevant. Most of the action occurs in the Place-in-Between, a changing landscape that mirrors tragic events in human history. Competing mythologies, including Armageddon, angels, demons, and African folklore create confusion, and although there are many promising elements in Payne’s first entry in the Daughters of Light series, they don’t come together in a cohesive way. Ages 12–up. Agent: Amy Tompkins, Transatlantic Literary.

November 15, 2016
A Canadian teen discovers paranormal powers in the near future.Not even two decades from now, climate change has damaged our world drastically and societies are struggling to deal with the repercussions of our abuse of the planet. On top of all this, 14-year-old Latina Jasmine Guzman must deal with the trauma of losing her abducted twin sister as well as her mother's lupus. After a series of bizarre events leave Jasmine questioning her sanity, she learns from Raphael, a beautiful, brown-skinned boy at her new school, that she is a Seer and that she's in danger. Even more surprisingly, she discovers that her sister is in fact alive and that, in order to get to her, Jasmine must go to the Place-in-Between, where demons dwell and await her arrival for nefarious reasons. The plot suffers from uneven pacing, with drawn-out moments that add little and gaps left from rushing through important parts of the story. Narrator Jasmine does a lot of telling, not showing, so her character feels more like a set of assertions than a fully developed person; her regrettable overuse of "crazy" is both tedious and off-putting. The obvious statement about the effects of climate change is executed clumsily, and story is sacrificed in the process. With repetitive language, underdeveloped storyline, and lackluster worldbuilding, this series opener leaves much to be desired. (Paranormal adventure. 12-16)

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January 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-In this first book in a new Canadian fantasy series, 14-year-old Jasmine's twin sister was abducted five years earlier, and her mother has been sick ever since. Things get even stranger when Jasmine is forced to go to a new high school for her own protection. Jasmine learns that she is a Seer, a person with special powers to see demons, and it is up to her and the other Seers to save the world from both evil demons and climate change. Raphael, a boy from school, guides her through the parallel in-between world where the demons are starting to enter, and she sees that her sister is not really gone; she is stuck in this same realm, and Jasmine and her new friends are tasked with breaching the divide to rescue her sister. This plot-driven story relies heavily on dialogue to develop the setting. As a result, the world-building sometimes feels insufficient and the characters (and their relationships) two-dimensional. The lack of detail also leaves a lot of unanswered questions: Why do the Seers exist? How is Jasmine's mother's illness connected to Jasmine's abilities? The sequels will hopefully fill in plot points. VERDICT This lacks a well-built world and complex characters, but fans of apocalyptic novels may find this a fast, action-packed read.-Rachel Reinwald, Lake Villa District Library, IL

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December 1, 2016
Grades 7-10 When they were 10 years old, Jasmine Guzman's twin sister, Jade, was abducted right in front of her. Jasmine has since learned to live with the guilt and grief, struggling to help her ailing mother suffering from lupus. But when she gets assigned to a bizarre new school where many students are twin girls, her past comes flooding back. It turns out that she and Jadewho was abducted into another realm entirelyare Seers, teenagers with psychic and physical powers, from mind reading to time travel. The final battle approaches, dark forces gain power, and Seers are the only hope to save humankind. This first book in the Daughters of Light series combines dystopia (it's 2030, but already dark with climate change and water shortage) and time-warping (the Toronto subway system transports them into a realm that morphs from bomb-threatened WWII London to the time of the Black Plague). The rules of the Demon world can be hard to follow, and some of the results feel anticlimactic, but overall this is an inventive read with thought-provoking themes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)