
In Patrick Ness's six-starred masterpiece, ordinary teens live alongside apocalypse-fighting "Chosen Ones." This Michael Printz finalist brilliantly subverts YA tropes while tackling anxiety and identity. What makes your story extraordinary when you're not the hero saving the world?
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Have you ever wondered what happens to the regular people in towns where supernatural battles rage? While the "chosen ones" with mystical powers save the world weekly, Mikey Mitchell and his friends are just trying to graduate high school without getting caught in magical crossfire. In their small American town, the "indie kids" (those impossibly cool teens with names like Satchel and Finn) regularly battle vampires, soul-eating ghosts, and now mysterious blue-light entities called "the Immortals." Meanwhile, Mikey struggles with debilitating OCD, his sister Mel is recovering from an eating disorder, his best friend Jared happens to be quarter-god (though he'd rather focus on his cat sanctuary job), and his crush Henna might be moving to Africa with her missionary parents. When school administrators routinely include supernatural damage in their insurance policies and students know which parts of campus to avoid because of dimensional portals, the line between extraordinary and ordinary blurs. Yet amid apocalyptic chaos, these teens discover that personal battles-with mental illness, family dysfunction, and uncertain futures-can feel just as world-ending as any cosmic threat.
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