Description

Angel Falls

By Julia Rust & David Surface
Published by YAP Books

What if you had the power to heal your broken family? To bring back a lost loved one? Jessie and Jared are about to find out, in a place called Angel Falls, where an ancient and mysterious power waits to fulfill their deepest wishes — with dangerous consequences.

Fifteen-year-old Jessie Reed would do anything to keep her parents together. When her father inherits an old house from his elderly and mysterious Cousin Dorothy, Jessie accompanies him to the seaport village of Beauport, while her mother stays behind in New York City. Fearing for her parents’ marriage and unnerved by the prospect of spending her summer in “a dead woman’s house,” Jessie strikes out on her own and stumbles across the isolated trails of Angel Falls, a wild and beautiful place that holds the ruins of a three-hundred-year-old town with a strange history. There she encounters Jared Younger, a sixteen-year-old local boy who considers these forbidden woods his own.

Jared is caretaker for his father, an artist crippled by depression. Jared feels powerless to save his father — until a series of unexplainable events brings him face to face with a power he never knew he had. Jared’s teacher, Chris Delany, offers to help him understand and control the strange thing that’s happening to him — but are Delany’s motives as pure as they seem? Or, as Jessie suspects, does Delany have a secret agenda of his own that puts Jared in danger?

Together, Jessie and Jared discover that the truth is far more dangerous than they could have imagined and that they must work together to save their families and uncover the strange secret of Angel Falls.

Praise for Angel Falls:

“I was a huge fan Angel Falls, co-written by Julia Rust and David Surface, which was one of those books which deserves to find an audience … I found this powerful character study of two lonely teenagers who connect, strangely moving … the two sixteen-year-old main characters were so well drawn.  Fans of thoughtful, character driven stories which balance the pain of early teen romances with very subtle supernatural stories are in for a real treat.”
— Gingernuts of Horror

“The book is compelling, with some memorable moments, and was hard to put down … I especially liked the relationship Jared had with his dad and the way the authors showed that under the idyllic surface things were not quite right. Recommended.”
— Monster Librarian

“A wonderfully constructed coming of age story featuring two remarkably likeable (for teenagers) central characters. There are shades here of The Monkey’s Paw and Pet Sematary as the protagonists come to realise that they really should be very careful indeed in what they wish for. In truth I found it a little bit sad, this representation of youthful naivete crashing into adult reality, this loss of innocence in its most literal sense.

Great writing and completely realistic characters make this a thoughtful as well as a highly entertaining novel. Highly recommended.”
— Anthony Watson