Nick Underbridge is the biggest, smelliest and most shunned student in school.
Until he comes to Francesca's rescue when bullies throw her pack into a patch of stinging nettles.
Frank goes to his house and hears a music like she's never heard before, wafting out of his basement.
She heads down the stairs and sees a big troll, with moss growing behind her ears, playing this ethereal, wonderful music and somehow it's tied to Nick.
She quickly learns how -- that's his mum, playing for him, so he can hear her trying to comfort him through a window, a portal to another world -- but they're not the only ones listening. Not any more.
The bullies post a video online.
Her cat speaks to her and catches and eats...a shadow thing that's been trailing her. One of many.
As word gets out, more insect-like shadows creep and slither into Nick's basement, and they change the window, away from Nick's mother's music, until it's facing another world, one not populated with trolls, but by something far more sinister. It's swirling in grey, dried-out dust ... of a world sucked dry by their limitless appetites. Lifeless. And now they want out -- and into our world.
This book had a very "Upside Down" feel, from the Netflix show Stranger Things, but it had none of the gore, just all the creepy tone and feel of the TV show, although the book's not set in the 80s.
A fantastic way to start the month's reading!
