Finding Jade

Gr 9 Up—In this first book in a new Canadian fantasy series, 14-year-old Jasmine's twin sister was abducted five years earlier, and her mother has been sick ever since. Things get even stranger when Jasmine is forced to go to a new high school for her own protection. Jasmine learns that she is a Seer, a person with special powers to see demons, and it is up to her and the other Seers to save the world from both evil demons and climate change. Raphael, a boy from school, guides her through the parallel in-between world where the demons are starting to enter, and she sees that her sister is not really gone; she is stuck in this same realm, and Jasmine and her new friends are tasked with breaching the divide to rescue her sister. This plot-driven story relies heavily on dialogue to develop the setting. As a result, the world-building sometimes feels insufficient and the characters (and their relationships) two-dimensional. The lack of detail also leaves a lot of unanswered questions: Why do the Seers exist? How is Jasmine's mother's illness connected to Jasmine's abilities? The sequels will hopefully fill in plot points.