The Twelve

The highly anticipated second YA novel from the 2020 Branford Boase Award winner certainly lives up to expectations! An absolutely mesmerising, unputdownable text is enhanced by the beautiful atmospheric illustrations by Tom de Freston. The whole book oozes quality from the moment you pick it up. Set in Pembrokeshire and suffused with wonderfully vivid descriptions of place, this is the story of two siblings, Kit and Libby, who have a very typical love/hate relationship underpinned by a genuine care for each other. They are relishing their winter holiday by the coast, exploring an area seeped in history and mythology. Libby is desperate to test an ancient prophecy about the mysterious white tower and the Winter Solstice at midnight. Kit is in anxious pursuit, only to witness Libby’s fall into the void and her complete disappearance from this world, as if she had never existed.  Fortunately for Kit’s sanity, a local boy, called Story, met Libby and witnessed her fall and together they try to solve the mystery which seems connected to increasingly strange unseasonal weather phenomena and temporal glitches. As as they uncover ancient folklore about the mysterious Twelve, guardians of our increasingly damaged world, and travel back in time looking for Libby, a beautifully nuanced relationship develops between them. Showing complete trust and support for each other from the start, we  gradually learn about the bullying shadowing Kit’s life and of Story’s precarious and lonely existence, abandoned by his family. Both thrilling and thought provoking, this is a deeply satisfying fantasy adventure, with a brilliant mix of contemporary issues, characters with real depth and an evocative imaginative mythology that emphasises humankind’s responsibility to look after our planet. The writing is both lyrical and pacy, developing strong themes of loss, resilience and the importance of hope in a  natural world teetering on the edge of chaos.  Truly a book to savour.