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Published Mar 2023
368 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
One of Us is Lying meets A Deadly Education in this fantasy thriller that follows six teenage wizards as they fight to make it home alive after a malfunctioning spell leaves them stranded in the wilderness.
Ren Monroe has spent four years proving she's one of the best wizards in her generation. But top marks at Balmerick University will mean nothing if she fails to get recruited into one of the major houses. Enter Theo Brood. If being rich were a sin, he'd already be halfway to hell. After a failed and disastrous party trick, fate has the two of them crossing paths at the public waxway portal the day before holidays—Theo's punishment is to travel home with the scholarship kids. Which doesn't sit well with any of them.
A fight breaks out. In the chaos, the portal spell malfunctions. All six students are snatched from the safety of the school's campus and set down in the middle of nowhere. And one of them is dead on arrival.
If anyone can get them through the punishing wilderness with limited magical reserves it's Ren. She's been in survival mode her entire life. But no magic could prepare her for the tangled secrets the rest of the group is harboring, or for what's following them through the dark woods...
"Reintgen combines inventive worldbuilding, intricate plotting, and a strongly developed, racially diverse cast to craft a twisty tale of classism, redemption, and revenge. Tense prose and escalating environmental, magical, and social conflicts foster constant fear for the characters' fates." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Placing elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system within the familiar trappings of a school for magic, this is a no-holds-barred tale of revenge, atonement, and the pursuit of justice set in a world diverse in skin color and social classes. Ren is a protagonist for the ages: equal parts smart, calculating, and ruthless, forming a lethal package as an avenging angel. Truly fantastic." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Readers craving the electrifying twists and turns of a thriller alongside a healthy dose of magic will find their prayers spectacularly answered in Reintgen's A Door in the Dark. With dexterous prose, an impellent plot, and characters you can't turn away from, this story sinks its claws into you and doesn't let go." ―Ayana Gray, New York Times-bestselling author of the Beasts of Prey trilogy
"Magical boarding school students mysteriously stranded in a hostile wilderness? Yes, please. Reintgen blends thriller and fantasy in an absolute page-turner. I love when you don't see the twists coming, and this flawlessly delivers." ―K.D. Edwards, author of The Tarot Sequence
This information about A Door in the Dark was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Scott Reintgen has spent his career as a teacher of English and Creative Writing in diverse urban communities in North Carolina. The hardest lesson he learned was that inspiration isn't equally accessible for everyone. So he set out to write a novel for the front-row sleepers and back-row dreamers of his classrooms. He hopes that his former students see themselves, vibrant and on the page, in characters like Emmett.
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