KIDS OF KAZUMETH

A teen discovers a hidden world beneath his town and must stop a dark force that threatens two worlds in Wriston’s YAnovel.

High schooler Jack doesn’t think much of his strange dream about a close friend’s betrayal until an earthquake in his small Pennsylvanian town reveals a cave with mysterious writing on its walls. On his way to school, Jack passes by the cave and is nearly drawn inside by ghostly voices. Afterward, he’s met by his girlfriend, Emma, but he spends the rest of the day feeling off. A new tension—between the ordinary and the impossible—hangs over him like a fog. He ends up back at the cave with his best friend, Emerson, and this time they both hear it: a scream from deep within and voices that don’t feel imagined. The line between reality and dreams starts to blur as Jack begins to question whether his mother knows more than she’s letting on and if the voice he heard in the cave belonged to his missing classmate, Stefani. When Stefani is erased from everyone’s memory the next day, Jack and Emerson realize that something sinister is afoot. What starts as a mystery about a cave becomes something deeper: the dismantling of Jack’s life, piece by piece, until the only thing left is the choice to give in to the forgetting or to fight for a world that he’s starting to doubt ever existed (“I don’t even know what’s real anymore”). Throughout all of this, the writing holds steady even as the ground beneath the characters’ feet doesn’t. Tension builds in precise increments with a strange dream here, a missing person there, until suddenly nothing is certain. Jack wrestles not only with startling revelations about a magical world called Kazumeth but also the weight of grief, doubt, and loneliness. It’s these emotions that the main antagonist, Akuramundo, plays on as he turns allies against each other and works within the shadows to throw both worlds into turmoil. The pacing is brisk, and the narrative is layered with tension that complements the slow build of the first half. This is a story that is both compelling and thought-provoking.

A gripping, layered tale of magic, memory, and identity.