We loved Elatsoe and really wanted to love this one equally, but it is a bit harder to get into and doesn't have quite as developed villain / protagonist conflict as her other work.
Oli is a cottonmouth, a snake spirit that lives in warmer fresh waters, who is kicked out of the nest by her mother when she's old enough to survive on her own.
But survival is hard, and she makes friends and monster enemies along the way. She's a Lipan animal spirit, living in a world adjacent to ours, and has a human form she can take if she wants. She's tricked out of her mother's parting gift, a shawl, and years later when an ally finds a similar shawl, Oli tracks it down to discover one of her siblings may have crossed into our world. She's determined to find them.
It's important to note that Oli's world is connected to ours, but nothing from our world lasts long at all in hers. Her world loves our stories, our books, to be precise, and they have to be copied over before they disintegrate. But as a result, the spirt world's full of incorrect information and myths about our world.
Enter Nina, a Lipan tween girl whose family owns a bookstore and has an arrangement with a pack of coyote spirit people: the bookstore supplies books for discreet pickup and the payment keeps the bookstore afloat.
Add to this that Nina's grandmother has sussed out a potentially deadly secret: she can't go far from home any longer, or she starts to get really sick. She might even die if she goes too far away. There's a source of power, a spot spanning the two worlds, that has kept her alive a really, really long time.
At the same time, a white hunting dude, Paul, moves in along the edge of her grandmother's property. He resembles one of the Nightmare king's knights, sworn to hunt down and eradicate all animal spirit people from our world. Nina catches him snooping around on her grandma's land.
And then a storm of the century looms on the horizon and all of a sudden, Nina's grandmother's in danger. She needs to evacuate, but she can't.
Nina posts on social media and attracts…the attention of the Nightmare king's knights at the exact same time Oli needs to step through to go home.
The ending was the best part of this tale. I think I just needed more threat / villain presence along the way to keep me riveted the way I was with Elatsoe.
Still, a fantastic read and excellent world-building!
