Starred Review Well-known for his lyrical and powerful debut, The Art of Starving (2017), Miller has crafted a stunning and intimate new novel about the effects of trauma on individual lives, as well as the connections that allow people to face their own incredibly difficult pasts. Ash fell out of a tree house when she was young, losing all memory of what happened to cause the accident. Solomon has receded into his own imaginary world (the Darkside), populated by monsters, dragons, and enemies of all kinds, since the same incident that caused Ash's accident. Told in a similar way to Patrick Ness' Release (2017), the narrative in Miller's book switches between events based in reality and those based in the world that Solomon has created to escape his own trauma. Readers will be drawn into this not only because of the inventiveness of Solomon's imaginary refuge but also because of the desire to know what happened that led each of them to their present circumstances. Miller's ability to merge the darkly fantastic with reality is deeply affecting; readers will be unable to forget neither the pain nor the eventually freeing illumination Solomon and Ash find in the past.

Four years ago, when best friends Solomon and Ash were 12, something happened that neither remembers.The two reacted in very different ways: Ash struggles with depression, and Solomon has succumbed to serious mental illness. He dwells in Darkside, where dinosaurs live alongside humans and othersiders, humans with magical powers. In Darkside, Ash is a Refugee Princess under a spell, and Solomon has a crush on her bodyguard, Niv, who for safety has moved her from one undisclosed location to another ever since the riot when othersiders and humans clashed. In Ash's reality, she attends Hudson High, where her Solomon sometimes attends class and his stepfather, hunky Mr. Barrett, is football coach and vice principal. She also hooks up with Connor, Solomon's stepbrother. In Solomon's world, a wave of anti-othersider violence coincides with vandalism and dangerous pranks in Ash's, and the time the friends spend together in both places jars memories of the traumatic event that shattered their lives. Is it possible that their struggling friendship could be instrumental in saving two worlds? Miller (Blackfish City, 2018, etc.) delivers a tale of friendship and dovetailing realities: Each teen narrates from their own reality in alternating chapters, and the two narratives bleed into one another in a way that at times borders on confusing. The worldbuilding in Darkside will feel familiar to fans of fantasy. Ash is white; Solomon is white and Jewish.A darkly complex read. (Fantasy. 15-18)