The Gathering Dark by Christine Johnson (review)

Keira has always dreamed of escaping her small town in Maine and attending Juilliard. Then she meets Walker, and she is drawn to him despite herself. However, he proves to be a problem in ways she didn’t anticipate; not only does he interfere with her focus on the piano, she begins to have disturbing hallucinations whenever he is around. By the time the truth comes out—that she is the experimental progeny of parents from two different worlds and Walker has been sent to find her so that she can be killed—she is hopelessly in love with Walker and he with her. She’s a target because the cross-breeding of people from Darkside, an alternative universe composed of dark matter, with people of baryonic matter has destabilized Darkside; she’s also the one who might just have the power to set things right if she can find the courage to use it properly. Johnson is adept at maintaining an air of menace and suspense while infusing sexual tension into the mix; she keeps the heat between Keira and Walker at a constant simmer while danger atmospherically lurks. Like Claire in Johnson’s Claire de Lune (BCCB 5/06), Keira is a strong, well-developed, character, and her struggles with the unsettling events in her life—her new knowledge of multiple universes and her identity, and her heady first love—are credibly played out with a combination of uncertainty and bravado. While the swooning sometimes interrupts the danger plot, supernatural romance fans are in it for both kinds of action, and they’ll find plenty of it here.