Author: Elizabeth Hrib
Title: The Dark In-Between
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Publication date: May 5th 2020
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
Book Summary
Action-packed and emotionally powerful like big- and small-screen hits such as The Sixth Sense and Supernatural, The Dark In-Between by Elizabeth Hrib is sure to stay with you long after the lights go out.
Something lurks in the shadows between life and death.
A terrible accident brings sixteen-year-old Casey Everett’s life to a halt—literally. Pulled from the water, Casey is rushed to the hospital and miraculously revived. But her sudden return to the living is shadowed by the drowning of her best friend, Liddy.Overcome with grief, Casey returns home for the summer only to find the memories of the accident won’t let her go. Shadow-drenched nightmares. Whispers in the back of her mind. Her friend’s screams. Casey thinks she’s losing it… until she watches a boy fall from the sky.
Red—an angel fallen to earth to regain his wings—takes her to Limbo, a place that exists somewhere between the living and the dead. Now, in order to save her best friend, Casey must learn to walk these mysterious and dangerous paths or else risk losing Liddy’s trapped soul to something worse than death.
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Excerpt
I never should have let go. In her head, that day is still a blur of shrieking metal and blinding ocean sp.ray. One moment she’d been searching the coming twilight for the first wink of stars and the next . . .
She didn’t remember in pictures exactly, because the images were blue and purple and black, like the bottom of the harbor. But she could remember the jump of her heart as the boat cap- sized against the rocks and the crush of surf that had rolled her over and over.
The tide had caught her limbs, surging up and down as it pushed the breath from her lungs. And against her hands, she could remember the rough scratch of underwater rock and the slick feel of algae as she tried to protect her head. There was something else, too. The silk of skin against hers. Liddy’s fingers tangled with her own, and then nothing but the frantic thought that raged against her temple. Get to the surface.
Had Liddy had that same terrifying thought? Had she had the same realization that she couldn’t tell up from down in the dark?
“It was an accident,” Evan says simply. “Nothing you did or didn’t do would change that outcome.”
“You weren’t there,” she says. “You don’t know that.”
“You guys wore life jackets. Liddy was just dragged under when the boat tipped. You know this.”
But did she? Casey can’t remember breaking the surface. She can’t remember the first rush of oxygen into her lungs. So, at what point had she been saved and Liddy lost?
Other flashes of that day rush back—Liddy’s easy grin, the excitement that bled into her laugh, the rev of the boat’s engine— and with it a wave of nausea.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Casey says, turning on her heel and rushing toward the back of the house. She takes the main set of stairs. They curve sharply, and she races onto the landing, past the photos of Liddy at equestrian training, vocal recitals, and family vacations. The entire house is a testament to the wonderful person Liddy had been and now serves as a stark reminder of everything her parents had lost—everything Casey had lost in a best friend.
Hands grappling for the right door, she takes refuge in the bathroom, only to find a framed photo of Liddy staring back at her from the shelf mounted beside the sink. It seems that with her passing, more and more pictures had appeared in the house.
And she was always wearing that impossibly bright smile. 20
Casey tips the photo facedown and barricades herself behind the bathroom door, pressing the lock with her thumb and run- ning her hand up the wall for the light switch. There’s a fuzzy edge to the silence in the dark. Almost like watching a snowy televi- sion screen. The sound of nothingness, of that blurry noiseless whisper, grows into a pulse she can feel beat beneath her skin as she slides down against the door.
If she squeezes her eyes tight enough, all she can see is black.
Shapes grow out of the darkness in her mind. Tall reaching tree limbs. A black wood, shrouded in shadow and stone, covered in mounds of turned earth.
Casey tries to blink the images away. It’s not the first time this has happened, these grief-induced daymares.
...Casey? She freezes. The voice is new.
Author Bio
Elizabeth Hrib was born and raised in London, Ontario where she studied nursing at Western University. She now calls the East Coast home, where she works as a nurse in Halifax. When she’s not working or writing, she can be found at the piano, planning her next Netflix binge, or attempting to keep her small, windowsill garden alive.
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