When the Sky Fell on Splendor - Hardcover

Henry, Emily

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0451480716 ISBN 13: 9780451480712

Publisher: Razorbill, 2019

Synopsis

"Exciting, heartbreaking, and far from ordinary." --Kirkus

Emily Henry is "one of YA's preeminent voices....an exquisite, genre-bending novel. --Booklist

The Serpent King meets Stranger Things in Emily Henry's gripping novel about a group of friends in a small town who find themselves dealing with unexpected powers after a cosmic event.

Almost everyone in the small town of Splendor, Ohio, was affected when the local steel mill exploded. If you weren't a casualty of the accident yourself, chances are a loved one was. That's the case for seventeen-year-old Franny, who, five years after the explosion, still has to stand by and do nothing as her brother lies in a coma.

In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It's silly, it's fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.

Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn't fiction--it's a bright light, something massive hurtling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes and the teens go to investigate...everything changes.

About this title

About the Author

Emily Henry is the author of The Love That Split the World and A Million Junes. She is a full-time writer, proofreader, and donut connoisseur. She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it. She tweets @EmilyHenryWrite.

Reviews

Gr 6 Up—Calling themselves "The Ordinary," 17-year-old Franny and her friends form a tight-knit bond over their shared experiences of losing family and friends because of Splendor's steel mill explosion five years earlier. To keep their minds off the sadness surrounding them, the Ordinary spend their time investigating abandoned sites, writing and performing scripts based loosely on local ghost legends, then posting them for their small but loyal group of YouTube followers. But everything changes the night silver lights pulse across the sky. The teens' camera captures the image of a bright light, something massive hurtling down from the sky. When it crashes, curiosity overcomes fear, and they cautiously draw closer to the crash site, vowing to pursue the truth. Telekinetic powers? Crop circles? Menacing birds? An alien being that seems to invade Franny's body? Fraught with both hidden and not-so-hidden darkness, this plot has them all, and readers will be drawn to this fast-paced page-turner. Henry has crammed plenty of atmospheric, small-town spookiness into her book. VERDICT Teens who enjoy films like E.T., Stand by Me, and The Goonies and those who devour quirky TV series like Stranger Things and Riverdale will be drawn to this novel. A worthwhile purchase for YA collections.—Cheryl Blevens, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University

Edition details

• Publisher: Razorbill
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451480716
• ISBN 13: 9780451480712
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352