Neither Light Nor Dark: Destiny Awaits

by Lynn McCain

Overview

What do you do when you find out your entire life has been a lie?In the forests just beyond her grandfather's estate, Lily stumbles into the one place she's been forbidden to go. It's that visit that changes her life forever. After a tragic death in her family, the truth begins to surface behind the lies, and Lily finds herself not knowing who to trust. On her eighteenth birthday she is summoned by the Great Spirit to enter in to Arcadia, the land of her people. Once there, she realizes just how deep thelies go. Plagued by the memories of the past and what the future demands of her, she is torn between doing the right thing and doing what makes her happy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781547060115
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	06/23/2017
Series:	Beyond the Gates , #1
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.53(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

My name is Lynn McCain. I have a slight addiction to coffee, Pinterest, and Jesus, not necessarily in that order. I am a wanderer at heart and have a series of former addresses to prove it. My love for writing began during childhood and has manifested itself throughout the years upon many napkins and discarded pieces of paper. It has only been recently that I have sat still long enough to complete an entire novel, and now that I have begun this journey, I'm never going to stop. The best part about the whole thing is that I'm doing exactly what I love!

Editorial Reviews

2019-08-10
A YA novel sees a teenage girl find love and conflict in a fantasy realm.

In 1936, 13-year-old Lily Channon spends the summer at her grandparents' stately home. Lily delights in her fun-loving grandfather and his fantastic stories of dragons and adventure. The only constraint is that she's not allowed to leave the estate grounds; in particular, she must not go into the woods beyond the gate. But the woods call to her. She sneaks out and finds a boy there; he knows about her hidden birthmark and calls her "the one." Four years pass after that joyous summer. Lily's grandfather is dead, and she and her mother move onto the estate along with the new manager and his son, Henry. Henry is 10 years older than Lily but very attractive. The two fall in love and are to be married. But Lily goes to the woods once more and is drawn into Arcadia, a magical world once ruled by her grandfather. Arcadia is in thrall to the tyrant Reficul, and although it has been prophesied that Lily—now that she has turned 18—will save the land, there are dangers and betrayals to overcome. She finds her heart split between Henry and Calev, the boy she met four years earlier. Whom will she choose? How much will she sacrifice to uphold her grandfather's legacy? McCain (Smoke Signal, 2019, etc.) combines a modern YA quest fantasy with the more chaste romantic yearnings of yesteryear, the setting and contemporaneous time period evoking parts of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At 18, Lily is older than the children who first enter Narnia; consequently, Arcadia feels less wondrous a place and the quest a little less epic. But the characters are memorable—tiny Shim, for example, and smoldering Levona, who live in Arcadia—and while the action is at times helter-skelter, this mirrors quite cleverly Lily's breathless disorientation. Instead of lining up with narrative expectations, the story's dramatic moments gain prominence (or fade perfunctorily) to match the mercurial imbalances of Lily's ever shifting love triangle. The author's prose, plot, and dialogue carry the familiar stylization of epic fantasy, yet it is romantics who will most approve.

An edgy mix of escapism and tortured longing with strong characters.

Kirkus Reviews