Elisa

I think Midnighters is Westerfeld’s second published series, and I’m not sure what order they were written in compared to his other earlier series per se, but I’m loving what I’m reading. As a huge fan of Uglies, my very first exposure to Westerfeld, and of anything Scott Westerfeld lays claim to, I adore seeing the evolution of his writing and creative mind. I can tell The Secret Hour is an early work, it’s a bit rough around the literary edges but that is no major criticism, the emotional connections, the characters, and the scary monsters are all there. This was such a great read!

Jessica Day knew that moving from Chicago to small town Oklahoma was going to require some adjustment. But after a series of strange dreams where the earth seems frozen around her and one creepy incident with a luring killer kitty, she knows something weird is going on in the town of Bixby. Having encountered the very cryptic Dess earlier, Jess decides that maybe she shouldn’t dismiss the goth girl so quickly.

Eventually, Jess realizes she’s one of a very small group of teenagers with the ability to be conscious during a secret hour that starts at the stroke of midnight. What the group doesn’t know, or fully realize at first, is just how many enemies Jess has during the midnight hour –and possibly beyond it.

The Midnighters need to discover Jess’s talent quickly because the creatures of the secret hour want her dead before she can figure it out, and they're coming out in numbers never seen before to do it.