Hidden Among Us

This carefully woven story is delivered by five narrators, each precisely delineated and each very much an individual voice. Lissy, unknown to her, has been promised to the Hidden on her 14th birthday when she is old enough to begin breeding and provide the mortal blood they need to ensure that their destruction of the human race will succeed. Her mother Miriam’s long-distant affair with their ruler, the Swan King, produced Lissy and she must endure the deaths of her other two children, Rafe and Connie, if she does not surrender her daughter on the due date. Rafe wants only to save Lissy from her fate and, with Tom, Miriam’s partner’s son, becomes embroiled not only in the machinations of the Hidden, but the political scheming of the Fontevrault – an organisation formed in a centuries-old pact, intent on keeping the Hidden locked away behind a magic portal.

Hidden Among Us is a complex and dynamic tale in which both emotional and physical tensions are used to great effect. The sense of threat and danger is palpable, as the race to recover Lissy runs out of time and the Fontevrault pursue Rafe for the ancient manuscript he has stolen to help him in his efforts to save his sister.

The morality of the narrative is also clear – a people persecuted and killed because they are different; despair at the way the human race is brutalising the planet; the strength of family loyalties and the futility and danger of desire. This is an ambitious and absorbing book with a sequel clearly planned – one to watch out for.