In the tradition of Memento and Inception comes a thrilling and scary young adult novel about blurred reality where characters in a story find that a deadly and horrifying world exists in the space between the written lines.

Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.

Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.

Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopy Matrix meets Inkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.

Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.

Rating: 5/5 Stars
Quick Reasons: such a wild, horrifying ride!; intriguing and unique plot; VERY complex, mysterious characters; awesome prose

This. This book.

Such a wild, horrifying ride! I will be thinking about it for a long, long time.

Before this, I hadn't read Ilsa Bick. It's safe to say I will be picking up more of her novels in the near future; I'm intrigued (and only slightly concerned).

There's a sense of pressing mystery, a NEED to open the right door, to find the right answer, to solve the riddle...that you find yourself, at the same time, clinging to, not wanting to reach the end.

Ilsa Bick's prose is a blend of horror, pop culture, and insightful world-observations that left me breathless with heart-pounding terror and the need to know what happens next. Even after the final page, there are SO MANY questions left unanswered I can't wait to read the next book in this series.

The characters are complex and endearing while still retaining a sense of "dark and mysterious" throughout; the ENTIRE BOOK will leave you wondering just WHO these people are...and whether the world around you is the REAL one.

The premise of this is one I've seen before....but with it's own twists. Ilsa Bick blended so many different stories, ideas, and histories together, it's hard to put a finger on which world is the REAL one for Emma--or if she even has found it yet.

There's a HUGE creep-factor here, too; the idea is terrifying. The stuff of nightmares. And Ilsa Bick has described it so beautifully, so poignantly, I'll be thinking about this book for a long, long time. It's the type of story that sticks with you.

I REALLY enjoyed this read, and would recommend it to lovers of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, and horror/fantasy stories.