Conjured

July 1, 2013
Someone is killing atypical teens, and Eve is a witness, a target or an accomplice--she just can't remember which. Eve doesn't know who she is or where she came from after waking up from surgery with a new name, a new face and an underdeveloped cover story provided by the agency that now supports her. She struggles to adjust to her strange new world, finding solace only in her work as a library page with Zach, who is cute, intelligent and as agenda-free as any typical teenage boy. Everyone else--agents "Aunt" Nicki Gallo and Malcolm Harrington and a clutch of other agency-protected teens--manipulates and misleads her. Eve's newly acquired magical abilities and resultant visions of a bizarre and brutal carnival prove vital to the agency's work but destructive to her short-term memory. She is an unreliable and constantly confused narrator, but her pursuit of the truth and her selfless love for Zach help to transform her from a puppet into a real girl. Durst excels at describing grotesque violence and gorgeous magical transformations alike, painting a touching portrait of first love against a backdrop of Twilight Zone-type terrors. Patient readers will respond to this slow thriller about a girl with memory loss and magical powers, and a murderer on the loose. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

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October 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-Suffering from severe memory loss, Eve is taken to a safe house and told she's in a witness protection program, but that fact and many others are called into question when she meets other "witnesses" who believe that the agents will eventually kill her. With no information about the crime she witnessed, the teen has no idea who to trust. She's also haunted by chilling visions that immediately follow when she uses her various powers to do things like making the birds on her wallpaper fly or walking through walls. Eventually, she is able to remember enough to go traveling through many magical worlds on a hunt for "the Magician," only to find out that she herself was created as a way for him to store power from young magical beings by the inference of their dying breaths. Only her nonmagical boyfriend's belief in her newfound humanity is able to convince Eve that she doesn't have to be defined by her past. This is an urban fantasy without a solid sense of time or place. It's contemporary in tone, but there are no distinct regional flairs or cultural references. Due to Eve's memory loss and the story being told entirely from her perspective, readers learn things in fits and starts with memories slowly taking shape and reality constantly being questioned. The narrative progresses slowly and can seem disjointed at times, but the action does pick up and leads to a satisfying, if slightly creepy, ending.-Sunnie Lovelace, Wallingford Public Library, CT

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