The Messengers

by Edward Hogan

Overview

If you could see the future, would you have the guts to change it? A new psychological thriller from the author of Daylight Saving.

Fifteen-year-old Frances is sent to her aunt’s house for the summer to escape difficulties at home. Soon she meets Peter, a man unlike anyone she has ever known. Peter is a messenger—but his messages never bring good news. Peter believes that Frances is a messenger, too. In a compelling page-turner as complex as it is chilling, the author of Daylight Saving poses the provocative question: If you could change the future, where would you start?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763676988
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	987 KB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Edward Hogan is the author of Daylight Saving and two adult novels: Blackmoor, which won the Desmond Elliott prize in the U.K. and was short-listed for both the London Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Hunger Trace. He lives in Brighton, England.

Editorial Reviews

A mash-up of philosophy, mystery, and horror, this haunting YA novel takes on all of these subjects with satisfying results
—School Library Journal (starred review)

The story poses the kind of ethical questions so popular in basic philosophy courses: if you had the opportunity to save a complete stranger at great risk to you or your family, would you do it? Since such quandaries are the stuff of teen existential exploration, this will please those of a philosophical as well as a supernatural turn of mind.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Quietly thrilling.
—Kirkus Reviews

There are gothic elements to this fantasy thriller to keep fans of the genre satisfied.
—Booklist Online

Give this to any student who enjoys the supernatural.
—School library Connection

An adventurous read.
—VOYA

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2015
Gr 9 Up—After her older brother almost kills someone in a bar fight and disappears, Frances, a promising young artist, starts seeing strange things in her drawings. They materialize out of nowhere after she blacks out. She can't figure out why these images are hazy and imprecise—until she puts one of them under a scanner, and learns with the help of her mentor Peter, another "messenger," that each one reveals where and when someone is going to die. Peter's convinced that they're just a couple of killers, but Frances might have a plan to change all that, using their premonitions to save lives rather than end them, and maybe find her brother, presumed dead, in the process. But do they have the power, or the right, to change fate? That's only one of the weighty questions explored in this clever page-turner. VERDICT A mash-up of philosophy, mystery, and horror, this haunting YA novel takes on all of these subjects with satisfying results.—Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY

School Library Journal

2015-02-03
Frances is taking a break from her troubled family life and spending some time with cousins in a coastal English village.The blackouts that she's had off and on for years are becoming more frequent. What she hasn't shared with anyone is that following each blackout, she creates drawings that are beginning to unnerve her. She meets a man in his 20s named Peter who sells postcards from his beach hut in Helmstown and who recognizes her as someone like him: a messenger of death. Peter also has blackouts, after which he paints minutely detailed scenes of someone dying. Within two days he must deliver the painting to that person or risk harm coming to someone he's close to. Frances decides to take a different approach by trying to change events to prevent the deaths her drawings depict, but that has its own consequences. This unusual story's strength lies in the depth of characterization that the author teases out of Frances' introspection about her brother, who's on the run from the police, as well as strong dialogue that reveals Peter's struggle with the effects his strange power has had on his personal relationships. The premise is a bit thin, but it neatly serves as the vehicle by which Frances comes into her own. Quietly thrilling. (Fantasy. 12-17)

Kirkus Reviews