Thank you to Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers for sending me a copy of this book to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

I've not read any books by this author previously but when I was sent the blurb to see if it was something I'd be interested in, I was sucked right in. The fantasy aspect with it's lore and promise of ghosts was really interesting to me.

The cover of the book is gorgeous. And yes, I will judge a book by it's cover. Whoever did the art really captured the essence of the story that unfolds in the pages of the book.

This book is 100% YA and reads as such. Usually I don't mind YA, but the characters in this book seemed particularly immature. I have a 17 year old child and that child is not as naive as these kids were. That being said, when you grow up on a secluded island being schooled in a one room school house, I suppose you may not be as mature as one might expect you to be. I had a hard time connecting or having empathy for any of the characters. And the romance was more of an insta-love, there was no build up or real chemistry between Mabel the FMC and Miles the MMC.

If you've ever seen M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, then you get the vibe this book gives off. The people of Weymouth island definitely separate themselves from the rest of society and live by their own rules. And people just don't try and leave the island to pursue other lives.

All this being said, I just did not find the book flowed all that well. It was extremely slow with not much happening at all until the last few chapters, where all the action took place. I did enjoy the lore, but I felt it wasn't explored enough. The reader is told the lore rather than it being shown. I had a hard time picturing things or understanding just what the people of this island were truly trying to do for the world at large. I needed more world building to understand the magic and be able to have a suspension of belief that only 11 families would guard the world from a potential invasion of the dead. And I needed the author to drop hints as to what was really happening rather than have it all come to a head at the end.

One of my biggest complaints for this book would be the amount of characters that are introduced. I started writing down all the names and where they fit in and it was so many. Some that made just a periphery appearance and never again returned, leaving me trying to understand what their purpose was in the first place.

The writing could have used some tightening for me. I felt like the author never really tried to show what was happening as much as she just told the reader what was happening. It took me out of the story. I wanted to really understand what these storms were bringing to the world. Why did they start? How did the original families know they were the last line of defense for the beings that were trying to break through? It was just not executed well enough for me to understand the world.

I've read a lot of YA and enjoyed it despite being older. I can definitely see how this book might appeal to young readers as its target audience who are wanting to delve into fantasy. It's very young YA and would be easy for a younger age group to understand.
I would not compare this book to Twilight at all, as is listed in the blurb. But it is dark and mysterious and has some good bones as a story.