Riven
Which Reality Would YOU Choose? Seventeen year-old Emily’s dad is in prison for securities fraud and her mom’s strung-out on pain meds, leaving Emily to parent herself and her younger brothers and sister. She’s got things mostly under control until a couple weeks before Dad’s release, when voices start whispering in her head, and Gabe, the hot lifeguard at the pool, notices the strange brands engraved on her arm…the ones she’s trying desperately to hide. Emily doesn’t know how the symbols got there or what they mean. They appeared overnight and now they’re infected and bleeding. She’s pretty sure she’s losing her mind. Stress, insomnia, and her wounded egos drive Emily to self-medicate, which has to be why the nightmares from her childhood have resurfaced, why they’re commandeering her conscious even when she’s awake. It has to be why the fairytale creatures she created as a little girl insist they need her help. Triggered by the return of her childhood abuser and unable to cope with reality, Emily slips completely inside her elaborate fantasy world. She’s powerful in the First Realm, maybe even more powerful than her attacker. It would be so easy to stay there, to lose herself in enchantment…to lose herself in love. But something sinister lurks in the forest shadows. Emily soon discovers her demons have followed her inside her fairytale. They’re hunting her. With the help of the Fae, she frantically searches for the weapons she needs to defeat her greatest fears and escape back to reality before the man who tortured her can prey on her younger brothers and sister, too. Time is running out…
“Wow. Seriously. WOW!!!! It’s not often you get a book that’s an exciting, well-paced read but also full of powerful emotions and deeper meaning than you see at first on the page. RIVEN is such a book. I completely fell in love with Emily. She became so real to me. I was swept away by the darkness and magic of her story. There are so many layers to uncover in RIVEN. I highly recommend this book to all readers.”- James Dashner, Author of The Maze Runner series and The Mortality Doctrine Series.
In this debut fantasy thriller, a teen’s real life begins to overlap with a colorful world she thinks she’s invented. In this emotionally charged novel, Harris uses traditional fantasy elements to tell a vibrant self-acceptance narrative. Though ostensibly for older teens, Emily’s adventures with her three siblings (Claire, 14-year-old Aidan, and 15-year-old Jacob) begin with rich imagery, and only become more kaleidoscopic when the heroine “can’t decipher between what is fantasy and what is real.”
A whirlwind narrative about an imaginative heroine that uses fantasy to offer salvation from abuse.
– Kirkus Reviews
”Harris’ debut is a tapestry woven of deeply personal experience and Breath-taking fantasy. Readers will be swept away by her world building, and moved by Emily’s gripping journey.”
– Michael Buckley, Author of the Undertow Trilogy
“The confusion of adolescence is captured in hi-fi, and the seams of
identity are exposed in all of their ragged beauty.
Jane Alvey Harris’s *Riven* traces a critical juncture in a teen’s mental
health. When an elaborate fantasy threatens to take over her life, she
learns to transform her fear into courage and self-acceptance. A deftly
constructed, hyper-real world reveals the effects of extreme pressure on a
family torn by abuse.” – *Foreword* Clarion Reviews
