What We Saw at Night

Gr 9 Up—Allie, Rob, and Juliet are Minnesota teens brought together by a forced nighttime existence due to a rare disease. Xeroderma Pigmentosum, or XP, is an extreme sensitivity to UV rays. The briefest exposure to sunlight, or even bright electric lights, can lead to lethal forms of skin cancer and early death. So the three friends, sheltered by day, feel they have little to lose when they can finally break free at night. Juliet, a former competitive skier, is the ringleader. She convinces Allie and Rob to train for Parkour, a discipline of graceful leaps and somersaults used to traverse dangerous terrain and building sites. While practicing on a newly built apartment complex, Allie leaps onto a balcony where she sees a murderer standing over his victim, and, unfortunately, he glances up before she can escape. Allie finds herself fearful for her life, but also determined to find out who the man is and stop him from taking a new victim. A romance between Allie and Rob (which becomes sexual), Allie and Julia's fraught friendship, XP, Parkour, and the intensity of a killer on the loose make this novel an interesting page-turner, and the cliff-hanger ending will have most readers waiting for the next installment.—Cary Frostick, Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA