Title: Ethereal Enigma: Awakeningby Ink_Mirage
Source: Gardenia: A Review Shop by -Chrysalis_Realm
Genre: Fantasy
Subgenre: Mystery

Mature: Y (moderate profanity, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 30/40

Digging deeper: 59/100

Final thoughts: Complete
Note: Chapter 8 was the last available chapter as of the publishing of this review.

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. →

*****

First impressions total: 30/40

Title: 10/10
Ooh, I love this title. It's very mysterious, and it definitely works with a fantasy story, too, since it conjures up thoughts of magic. Pun unintended, but I like it. 😉

Story description: 5/10
My first observation here is that the story excerpts break up the actual blurb, dulling its hook. I'm not a person who likes story excerpts in blurbs anyway, but normally, I'll see a single excerpt set apart in its own section. Here, you're doing a little blurb, then an excerpt, then a section diver, and repeat. But the blurb is how you sell the story to potential readers, not the excerpts. They want to know the who, what, when, where, why of the story, and you want to strike a balance of giving away enough to interest them while holding back enough to draw them into the story in search of the answers. So, I typed up your blurb without the excerpts so I could better see what you have to work with (here and elsewhere, I'm eliminating spaces between paragraphs and italicizing to keep examples distinct from my feedback):

This is the story of oblivion.
Explore the enigmatic journey of a girl who radiates cheerfulness and excellence outwardly, yet with each passing moment, she quietly withers within.
She's a diamond in the rough, but it's as if everyone's wielding hammers, ready to shatter her brilliance.
Will the haven she finds in magic eventually become another source of betrayal?
Could it instead lead her down a path of darkness and change her for the worse?
Will someone like her alter her course, or will that someone walk alongside her?
While everyone battles their own demons, what happens when someone embodies that demon itself?
Tune in to find out!

Okay. So this is good. You've introduced your main character, although you haven't named her, but that's okay. While the plot and setting aren't clear, there's a general sense that everything revolves around her and magic, possibly in a scenario where she's learning how to use it. Your grammar is pretty solid, and the use of questions at the end of the blurb is a good way to get the reader wondering, thus prompting them to start reading. However, having too many questions dulls the effect, and detailed questions about specific events that occur later in the course of the story aren't helpful, because the reader doesn't even know the basics yet.

So, I would cut the last two questions and the "Tune in to find out," because that sort of feels like something I'd hear in a TV commercial. It doesn't fit the overall tone of this blurb. There's a similar problem with "Explore," which also breaks the natural flow from the first line to the second. I'd put the first three sentences all in the same paragraph, and for the second sentence, you could just change the start to something like, "It's the enigmatic journey of..." Then, the following two questions can stay in their separate lines, triggering the reader to stop and think after each one.

And there you have it. An interesting blurb with some pull for a potential reader. Now, you could work on it to strengthen the hook, and I'd recommend checking out justwriteit's chapter in their 8 Chapter Challenge on writing a story logline and pitch for help with that. I'll drop the link in the in-line comments here. →

Like I said, I would cut the story excerpts from the blurb completely, but I did want to go over a few things I saw in them that I'm guessing will show up later in the story. The first thing is double punctuation (?! and ??). Usually, I see people use these when they're trying to show someone is shouting or screaming or something like that, but it's better to describe that in the dialogue tags than it is to rely on extra punctuation. Adding more descriptive detail to dialogue tags is also great for character development, because you can describe tone, facial expressions, and body language, showing the reader who a person is instead of telling them who they are. So, a couple of examples, using your lines (out of context, of course, but just to show you):

"What's the point in living in a world where you've lost your identity?" she screamed in frustration.
"Who's talking? Hello?" she called, her voice rising with her anxiety as each question went unanswered.

The next thing I wanted to mention is the importance of keeping one speaker's dialogue (and actions) all together in the same paragraph. There's one section of dialogue split into two lines here, and it's not a big deal when it's out of context and there are no other speakers to confuse the reader, but within the story, that can get pretty confusing. Readers typically expect an A B A flow to conversations, where A is the first paragraph with the first speaker (and any of their actions), and B is a new paragraph with the next speaker (and their actions). So, when one speaker's dialogue gets split up, you end up with an A A B format, which throws the reader off. This is when I start scrolling back and forth, trying to figure out who is saying and doing what.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the words in asterisks. In a text conversation, that's how you describe tone, facial expressions, body language, whatever, but in a story, you need to write that out. Usually, that sort of thing goes in the dialogue tags, and just like I said earlier, that's a great way to show character development. So, I'll use your line again for an example:

"Finally..." A sinister chuckle followed that one word, echoing in the darkness around her.

Cover: 7/10
Okay, to start, I love the imagery. The dark background makes the bright magic stand out, and the hands on the top and the bottom look amazing, as does the heart in the middle. As for your text, I like the cursive "Ethereal," but I don't like the more blocky, funsy "Ethereal" behind it. It feels too cutesy for this cover. I don't think you need it, anyway, so I'd just cut it out. The rest of the title is good, but I have a question about "Peak Prodigy." Is that the pen name you're using? Or does that refer to the people to whom the two hands belong, since there's one at the bottom and one at the top? If that's the case, I'd cut both instances of "Peak Prodigy" out, because that's a detail better saved for revealing in the story. It's just confusing on the cover, because the size and placement makes me think it's an author's name at the bottom and the cover's graphics designer at the top, but the content of the text is the same in both places. If it's not the pen name you're using, then you need to add your name on the cover. Give yourself some credit! Just swapping the text "Peak Prodigy" at the bottom for your name would work well, without changing the font, size, color, and all that.

Now, the text on the sides is interesting. It felt weird to me at first, like it was ticker tape or something printed on a perforated edge that you need to tear off of an envelope to open it, but when I looked closer, I realized those were words. I figured they'd be something like hieroglyphics or some other real or made-up language that uses different letters from English, but looking closer, they are in English. They're just so small that they're hard to read. Normally, I would recommend bumping the font size up so they're more legible, but in this case, I don't necessarily think you should. The difficulty reading those words adds to the sense of mystery you're already building through the title and the rest of the cover. I do think you could change the font, though. The current font has a robotic, electronic feel to it, like a computer printout, and that's not what you're going for here at all. I don't know what font would work best here, so you'd just have to play with it.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 8/10
0: I love your note at the end of this little author's note. So true! Author's notes give the reader insight into the person behind the story, which adds to the story itself. Perfect grammar isn't the most important thing in an informal note like this, but I'll just point out there's an extra "in" after "Dive," "y'all" should probably have an apostrophe, and there's an extra period in the line following that.

1: Aw, this is a cute first chapter, and it's really good for a beginner writer, so kudos to you for that! Like you said in the author's note, you introduced a lot of characters, but you did it without overwhelming the reader. I don't know who everybody is yet, but I wouldn't expect that in a family setting with parents and a rowdy bunch of kids. Learning about them as the story progresses is a better way of making them believable, relatable, and memorable, and you've made a good start here. The love and camaraderie comes through loud and clear, as does the pain of loss and their desire to comfort each other when someone is hurting. The main character isn't explicitly clear at this point, although I assume it will be Lisa, but I'll find out as I read.

As I said in the blurb, your grammar is pretty solid. I found a few mistakes, but most of them aren't consistent errors, so I'm chalking them up to proofreading misses. The first error was with a dialogue tag, which you normally do perfectly, so I'm not too fussed about that. You just forgot to change the period to a comma, and there's a missing space between the closing quotation mark and the first word of the dialogue tag. This is the line, so you can find and fix it easily: "And for me you will always be a rat."Jin retorted rapidly.

The story is in the past tense, which you stick to pretty well, but there are a few areas where you slip into the present tense, so that's something to watch out for. There's one pronoun error, and later on there's a text abbreviation in dialogue that should be spelled out in full. Both are one time issues, though, so it's not really a big deal. Here are the lines: "Jack tilted her head." and "U started it, girl!"

There's also an incomplete ellipsis (...) at the very end of the chapter. You usually use the full three periods, but here and in the author's note, you used two, so I just wanted to let you know that it should be just three. No more; no less.

Oh, and there's this one sentence: "As a tear escaped Lisa's eye, she couldn't bear to see her brother in pain." I'd cut "As" and change the comma to a semicolon.

*****

Digging deeper: 59/100

Cover & title: 8/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Story description: 3/5
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Grammar & voice: 11/20
There's one area where you consistently have trouble, but most of the errors I saw throughout the first five chapters are inconsistent and rare. I'm going to start with the biggest issue, which is dialogue, and then I'll go through the other ones.

I've already talked about keeping one speaker's dialogue and actions together and starting a new paragraph when the speaker/actor changes. You're good about starting a new paragraph with a new speaker, but the actions get disconnected. So, there might be a line of dialogue by person A, followed by the action of person B, and then you start a new paragraph with person B's dialogue. Or you put dialogue tags into a new paragraph, disconnecting them from the speaker and also introducing a grammatical error, because dialogue tags are actually incomplete sentences. That gets really confusing, and it gets worse as the story progresses.

Dialogue tags need to stay with the dialogue, because they actually count as part of the dialogue. Dialogue doesn't have to come with a dialogue tag, but a dialogue tag has to come with dialogue. The tags can't stand on their own. Now, that doesn't mean every sentence that follows dialogue is a dialogue tag. You can tell the difference by just asking if it's a complete sentence. If it is, it's probably not a dialogue tag. Dialogue tags also directly describe who is speaking and how they're saying it, so if you see anything like "he said," "she asked," "they shouted," that's a dialogue tag. As far as punctuation and capitalization, you did this really well in the first chapter, but that gets messy as the dialogue gets separated from its dialogue tags, too, so just remember to change a period to a comma and always lowercase the first letter of the first word of the dialogue tag (unless it's a proper noun which is always capitalized). So, a few examples, also showing how to pair action with speakers:

"I don't understand what's going on," she whispered. She bit her lip nervously as she scanned the darkness.
"Did you hear something?" he asked, straining to hear the mysterious voice.
She shook her head. "No, but something just feels...weird..."
He frowned. "I don't feel anything." He shifted his weight to his other foot, wondering if this was all a game.
"Don't touch me!" she shrieked suddenly. "Something's touching me!"

So, what do you do if you just have one character talking throughout the entire chapter? Obviously, you can't have one giant paragraph just because it's all Lisa's dialogue. In this case, how you group sections of dialogue and how you divide them is up to you, but I usually go by things like subject change, tone, emotions, and actions. When there's a distinct shift in one of those, it often changes how the person is talking, anyway, and you can describe the change in their facial expressions, body language, and any actions they're doing in a paragraph between sections of dialogue. That kind of creates the A B A format readers expect with dialogue, except in this case, there's only speaker, and B is almost like an extended dialogue tag made of complete sentences. You started by doing this, but then you switched into separating the actual dialogue tags from the dialogue, so I'll just give a quick example as a refresher:

"I can hear you," she called out into the darkness. "Come out from wherever you're hiding! You're not scared of me, are you?"
She listened as her taunting words disappeared into the void, her anxiety growing with every second. Her heart pounded faster and faster. She clenched her trembling hands into fists and grit her teeth.
"I'm not scared of you!" she shouted. "I'm not scared of anything! If you think you can scare me, you're wrong!"

In that example, there were only two segments of dialogue per paragraph, each separated by one dialogue tag, but you can have as much dialogue and as many dialogue tags as you want in one paragraph, especially if everything stays in the same tone and on the same subject. I usually try to come up with examples that are related to the specific story I'm reviewing, but this is a tricky one, so I'm just going to use an example from one of my stories to show a paragraph of dialogue with multiple dialogue tags:

"Then get out of here and talk about nothing until you can both behave like adults," I interrupted Silvio's angry growl. "For the rest of the uninvited guests," I continued, emphasizing 'uninvited,' "this is how tonight is going to go. Yves, Belle, and I are going to bake food, and you're going to eat it. Then, when everybody's full—or we're tired of baking," I added, looking pointedly at Gilbert, "we're going to the lounge just off the hall of the royal family's bedrooms for a pajama party. Yes, a pajama party," I said, meeting Nokto's curious eyes when he opened his mouth in question. "As Clavis is demonstrating now."

Moving on, the only other general grammar thing I noticed was a tendency to under-use commas, but that's not a huge, glaring issue, just something to keep an eye on. Commas are a pain.

There was one paragraph where you had part of the sentence offset within hyphens, and I'd recommend either putting a space on either side of the hyphen to make it stand out more and not look like a mistaken hyphenated word ( - ) or use an em dash (—, Alt+0151). Although Wattpad is weird about converting em dashes into regular hyphens sometimes, so putting spaces on either of the hyphens may be the better bet.

There's the occasional sentence with odd wording, sometimes because your word order is a little unusual or a phrase is too wordy, but that's not a common issue. Examples of word order issues are the phrase "only if," which is more commonly "if only" (in the specific context that I didn't write down), and "two years of more experience," which is more commonly "two more years of experience." As for wordiness, a phrase like "he would rather prefer" could just be "he preferred." I think you would probably catch these while proofreading, since they're not things you usually do, but I just wanted to point them out so you look for them.

A couple of text abbreviations and colloquialisms snuck into the story, too, and just like spelling words out instead of using the text abbreviations, these are things you should write properly for a narrative like this. However, in dialogue, you can use these to show a person's speech patterns, because people don't talk perfectly. So, an abbreviation like "convo" is fine in dialogue, but in the narrative, it should be "conversation." "U," on the other hand, is not appropriate in dialogue, because there's no difference in sound between that and the proper "you." Another common mistake is "the both of them," which is actually a colloquialism and is fine in dialogue, but in the narrative, it should just be the more proper "both of them."

There's only been one instance of a character's thoughts so far, and you put that in single quotation marks and correctly followed dialogue rules. You definitely want thoughts to look different from dialogue, so what you did is fine, but if there are a lot of thoughts that also coincide with spoken conversations, the single quotation marks and double quotation marks can get confused. In that case, you could just put thoughts in italics and not worry about any quotation marks. But if you're going to do that in one place, that's how you should do thoughts everywhere else for consistency.

As far as your writing voice, you have a very beautiful, descriptive style. You don't describe everything, but what you focus on gets elaborate, poetic detail. There might be a little too much telling instead of showing where emotions are concerned, and in those instances, I'd focus on showing the physical reactions your characters have in response to their emotions (facial expressions, body language), and I'd recommend describing more elements throughout the story to fill in the picture, but you don't need to go as in-depth as you do with, for example, Lisa's eye color change.

Plot & pacing: 2/10
This is a very original plot, but I don't know what's going on, and because of that, the story feels very rushed. The transition from chapter one to chapter two was really jarring. I had to click back and forth several times to try to make sense of it, and while I quickly realized the first line in chapter two was a continuation of the last line in chapter one, that didn't clear up all the confusion. But, for that specific issue, I'd recommend starting chapter two with an ellipsis to show that the first sentence is a continuation from the previous chapter: "...the only ones who possessed the Luminaire blood."

But then the next line happens: "Moments later Lisa found solace amidst the chaos of her surroundings." Moments after what? Was chapter one a memory? Was it real? I got the impression in chapter one that all the siblings were children, but looking back, there was no indication of age until chapter five, when Fred and Lisa are called "full-grown adults." So, right off the bat, there's a ton of confusion, because I don't know if time has passed, or if this follows immediately after chapter one. I assumed time had passed at first, because Lisa's personality changed completely in chapter two, but now, I don't know what to think.

I know you want to withhold information to increase the mystery, and there's nothing wrong with starting a story in the middle (which is what this feels like), but you do need to give some information. It's like the reader is dropped into the middle of a story and then dragged along with the assumption that they know everything that came before the point where they entered. It doesn't work. So, you need to backfill information as the story progresses. Doing this through character thoughts or dropped hints here or there is all you need. You don't have to do a huge paragraph that's just an info dump, and you don't have to interrupt the flow of action in a way that slows the pace to a halt. Just fill in the blanks a little. Part of the mystery is telling the reader a little more as the story progresses, and you don't have to wait until the end to tell it all. Please don't. If you don't tell the reader, their mind will make assumptions without them even realizing it, and if those assumptions end up not matching the story, that adds to the confusion.

A good example of that is the question about timeline, and I'm not just talking about the transition from chapters one to two. I didn't even realize I was doing this, but without an indication of time of day or character age, I guess I assumed the friend picking Lisa up from her house was driving her to school. She was still living with her siblings, and when her brother cracked a joke about her ride being her "Romeo," she said he was just a friend, and then she and Fred talked about grades in the car. So, it was a shock when you said it was nighttime in the next chapter, because there was no indication of time prior to that.

Another point of confusion is names, and this is a big part of the problem with dialogue, too. After chapter one, no new characters get names until Fred, introduced in chapter two, gets a name in chapter four, and Louis, also introduced in chapter two, gets a name in chapter five. And there are still more unnamed characters in the mix. Using pronouns all the time gets really confusing, especially if there's more than one person of the same gender in the same conversation. There is no huge, plot-twisting revelation when those characters finally get names. Their names just appear, with no change to the story other than a reduction in confusion. It's actually a little disappointing, because I assumed there was some big reason they weren't being named, like Fred was the phantom, and he was behind the whole thing, but that wasn't the case. So, there was no point in withholding those names in the first place.

Speaking of names, I'm assuming this is important, but Lisa has a lot of names. Fred calls her Sa, and then we find out her full name is Melissa, and then Louis calls her Crystal, and then he calls her Lily. I think it's all her, anyway? Louis is looking for her, so I don't know who else it would be, but why would he call her multiple names? People generally have one nickname they favor. Although this may be important for the unfolding mystery, so I guess I'll have to wait and see.

So, I'm treating chapter one as a prologue, because that's what it feels like to me. Therefore, the plot, as I understand it, starts with Fred picking Lisa up and then going for a night drive. They find a creepy doll in the road that says "Kill Lisa," and Fred destroys it, but it's outside of a toy store that's lit up. They go inside, creepy dolls swarm them, and Lisa's soul gets teleported into another dimension. Fred carries her back out to his car, but he can't find his keys, so he goes back in the store to find them. He can't, so he goes back to his car, but Lisa's body has now been teleported away, too.

Meanwhile, some phantom is messing with Lisa's mind in the void by pretending to be Louis, her (maybe?) boyfriend. She destroys the image, but probably not whoever is behind it, and she's stuck in the void until someone comes to rescue her. She has a pendant that is connected to Louis, so she uses it to communicate with him.

He has been in his apartment, listening to his roommates come home and complain about Lisa being so good at magic. When he gets her message, he sees and hears some of what happened to her, and he goes looking for her.

Also, there's chemistry between Fred and Lisa.

It's a great plot. I just have no framework to understand it. It really feels like I'm reading a book starting in the middle, so I've skipped all the important information like who the characters are, what relationships they have with each other, what the setting is, what's going on in their lives, etc. Without that foundation, each new piece of info just adds more questions instead of answering them. If the plot conflict is Lisa getting pulled into the void, there's no build-up to it, because it happens immediately in chapter two, and since I don't have a point of reference, I don't know what a good resolution looks like, beyond her just getting out of the void. Any impact on her magic or her relationships is an unknown quantity, because I don't know what her magic or her relationships were like before this happened, either.

Does that mean you need to scrap this and start over? No, definitely not. And you don't even need to alter the timeline, either. Just fill in the blanks. I don't know if you've planned this all out before writing, or if you're making it up as you go along, but if you're still getting inspiration and still writing, then just keep all that in mind and try to clarify some points for the reader as you go. If you're stuck, go back to the beginning for editing. Reexamine things. Add in more details. Doing that may spark ideas so you can continue writing new content.

But I can say from experience that if you're actively writing, don't stop to go back and edit. At least when I do that, I get stuck in an endless cycle of backtracking to fix this or change that, and the story stalls, because I can't write a new chapter if I changed what happened to so-and-so, because that affects such-and-such, and if I change this, then that doesn't work, and I have to...You get the idea.

Characterization: 5/20
A big part of this score is just the general confusion about the plot. It's hard to relate to the characters when I don't know what's going on. Emotional descriptions are weird sometimes, too, and character traits seem contradictory. The Lisa in chapter one seems like a sweet, compassionate sister, but the Lisa in chapter two is a dark, sarcastic person who enjoys angering other people, like she's always looking for a fight. She and Fred have a strange relationship where they bond over insults, maybe? I don't really understand them at all, and it's very odd when Fred has such a visceral reaction to the doll saying "Kill Lisa." Then there's talk about her having such powerful magic, but Fred's is definitely more powerful than hers, at least in what's been shown. She even says and thinks things along the lines of him being stronger than her.

The part when the roommates enter the apartment is a good example of words, tone, and emotions not matching. There's a disconnect. Someone "lamented, a hint of sadness intertwined with the wickedness in his tone." How do you do that? Lament and sadness go together, but lament and wickedness don't, unless it's a mocking lament, but since lament came first, that is the primary indicator of emotion. But wickedness would override lament. He then goes on to make a "playful yet concerned remark," and playfulness certainly doesn't go with lament or sadness, although concerned would. Did his entire personality just flip? It's very confusing, and it's very hard to get a handle on a character when they're contradicting themselves so frequently.

As the story goes on, I get the impression that Fred and Lisa, and Louis and Lisa, have very close friendships (or more?), and both men (?) are very concerned about her safety. I'm not so sure about her perception of their relationships, though. There's a spark of physical attraction between her and Fred, stronger than her reaction to the phantom's portrayal of Louis, who I think is supposed to be her boyfriend. His image doesn't seem to affect her much at all, as if she doesn't feel as strongly about him as the phantom thinks she does. Her reaching out to Louis via the pendant doesn't really feel like a cry from the heart, either. It feels more like her summoning a useful tool.

She also seems very full of herself. There are some tears and some sadness at first in the void, hinting at something painful and traumatic in her past, but she seems to have moved on from that with a shield of arrogance and pride. She thinks she's better than everybody else, and when she can't get out of the void herself, she's not disappointed in herself as much as she's annoyed she has to rely on others to help.

This is what I'm getting so far, anyway. Like I said, I don't have a reference point for any of these characters, so I'm just going with what I've seen from chapter two onward. Ignoring chapter one, because I really get the impression that it's actually a prologue that's long in the past by the beginning of chapter two. Maybe?

Harmony within genre: 15/15
This is definitely Fantasy and Mystery. It's got plenty of magic, along with terms that I think are your invention, and tons of mystery, so, yep.

Originality: 15/20
The engagement factor is where you're losing points here. This story is 100% original to you, and as I've said before, your descriptions are fantastic. I'd like more descriptions to color in the world a bit, but what you have is amazing. The magical system seems pretty complex, and you've seated it nicely within your world, so there's nothing unnatural about it. It's a given. But the ambiguity and confusion right at the start of chapter two makes it hard for a reader to engage with the story, because they can't immerse themselves in something they can't understand.

Chapters 6-8:
There are a few words/phrases that you use a lot, and I'd recommend changing things up more frequently to avoid repetition that can lose reader interest. "Voice tinged with," "palpable," "enigmatic," and "ethereal" are all extremely common, and almost every noun or action seems to have two descriptors, which is where a lot of the issues with contradictions happen, as I talked about earlier. Another thing that does is add a lot of filler that doesn't actually say anything. The nostrils in the darkness are a good example of that. These nostrils show up, and even though Fred and Louis are surrounded by darkness and can't see anything unless it's right in front of them, there are twelve paragraphs—approximately three minutes of reading time according to Wattpad—with nothing really happening except the nostrils getting closer and closer. And then the chapter ends, and the nostrils still haven't arrived.

Usually, your dialogue is fairly natural, but there's a huge info dump in chapter eight where Lesley gives a ton of background info all at once, and that whole monologue is really unnatural. It's basically your narrative style put in quotation marks. If you want Lesley to give all that information, I'd rework it into something that sounds more like what a person would say and split it up, so it's integrated into the story. You could punctuate it with comments or questions from Fred or Louis, or say something about their changing facial expressions and body language as Lesley talks. Or you could have her say parts of it, and then have Fred or Louis thinking about other parts of it, pieces they knew that fit with what Lesley is saying.

Another option would be just removing the quotation marks and saying something like, "Lesley went on to explain that three days ago..." But that still ends up with a huge info dump. I think the best option would be to provide bits of this information in all the previous chapters, like pieces of a puzzle, with Lesley finally putting all those pieces together. That goes along with what I was saying about backfilling information to help reduce confusion, too. It's basically dropping bread crumbs for your readers to follow. They don't know where they're going, but each crumb makes them that much more curious.

*****

Final thoughts:
Mysteries upon mysteries upon mysteries. That's what awaits readers in this book by a new author with a distinctive artsy writing style. Magic and horror intertwine to tell the dark tale of a girl targeted by unknown forces while her friends struggle to find her missing soul and return it to her body. Creepy dolls, alternate dimensions, magical objects, dragons—nothing is as it seems. Who can she trust? What is real? Why is she a target? The answers are unclear, but the journey is only just beginning.