This tag is hosted by Reading Is My Superpower.
Today’s book is The Otherworld by Abbie Emmons.
My father always told me that there are two worlds.
Our world, and the Otherworld.
Our world is simple. It is the island. It is the lighthouse. It is the endless waves of ocean stretching in every direction. It is the soft, thick blanket of clouds rolling across the sky, carrying rain and sometimes snow.
The Otherworld is out there.
Beyond the edge of the ocean.
I wouldn’t have known it existed had I not asked my father when I was eight years old.
“What is out there, Papa?”
With a smile, he answered, “More ocean. Thousands of miles of it. Waves and waves into infinity.”
“Infinity,” I whispered, reaching my hand out as far as I could.
We were standing at the railing around the top of the lighthouse. I spread my fingers and watched infinity fill the spaces between them.
“And what’s that, Papa? That land way out there?”
Papa’s face went pale and quiet, like the breathless calm before a storm. His sharp eyes looked past the fog to the distant shapes of islands like ours.
“That is a whole other world,” he said, placing a weathered hand on my shoulder. “It’s where most people live.”
“Why don’t we live there?”
“Because we have our own world, little Orca.” His gaze floated across the silver-crested waves as they danced closer to our shore. “The other world is full of danger and darkness.”
About: This is the story of a young girl who grows up on an island until the day the outside world crashes in. Orca is sheltered and isolated in her world and her father hopes that’s all she ever knows. But when she founds a pilot who survived a plane crash on her doorstop, she gets to know Adam and his brother, eventually following them the otherworld to broaden her own horizons. It’s a perfect mix of romance, adventure and suspense with amazing characters. This one is a must-read.
Blurb:
Orca Monroe wants only one thing for her eighteenth birthday: to experience the Otherworld—the mysterious “mainland” across the sea that her father has forbidden her from visiting.
Growing up in a lighthouse on a remote island, Orca has lived isolated from the world… until one day when she finds a cell phone washed up on the beach. Orca has her first conversation with Jack Stevenson, a young man whose older brother, Adam, has gone missing after crashing his seaplane off the coast. Orca becomes Jack’s lifeline and his reason to hope that Adam is still alive. While her father is away, she scours the island for the missing pilot—determined to help Jack find his brother and prove to her father that she’s strong enough to take on the world.
One stormy night, Orca finds Adam Stevenson collapsed on her doorstep. As she nurses him back to health, she finds herself spellbound by his inquiring mind and rugged good looks. Simultaneously, Adam is captivated by her wild beauty and pure heart. But with a ten-year age gap between them—and her father’s determination to keep Orca protected from outsiders—Adam knows they can never be together.
Resigned to give Orca up, Adam returns to the mainland—but Jack refuses to leave her trapped at the lighthouse. Blind to the fact that his brother is in love with her, Jack offers to show Orca the world she’s always dreamed of. But when she leaves her island for the first time, Orca begins to realize that the mainland may hold more dark secrets than she ever imagined… and the two brothers she helped bring back together may be the very people she tears apart.
