Synopsis: Jack has an unhappy home life on a remote farm. His alcoholic father and bullying older brother make life miserable for him and his younger brother, Billy. His only moments of brightness are occasional escapes to the beautiful wooded valley near the farm. On one such visit a freak accident leaves him unconscious. Drawn into a strange but wonderful encounter with the spirit world, he meets a new friend, Ugo, at his home, Fire Fly Valley. When an unexpected opportunity suddenly comes to explore the valley further, Jack is taken into a world of completely new dimensions where he can see things previously hidden. Wherever there is life, he discovers, there is also a spiritual force and he learns that he can even change the future for generations to come.
Release Date: 25th February 2021
Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Magic, Death, Family, Historical
Pages: 97
Thank you to Author Geoff Parton for the ebook to read and review.
Review: When young farm boy Jack hits his head and becomes unconscious he is drifted into a world adjacent to his own and sees beings he’s never seen before including a Ugo who he befriends. Then a year later he and his brother Billy go camping and find themselves entered into this other world for good.
This was such a unique, deep and magical story. It explores so many things and really looks into them deeply, making you think and consider them. The perspective of death and the in between of death and life, how we are spirits and nothing more than was so fascinating. Then to consider what a dream really is and how one thing can change it. And then lastly to change one bad thing in life and have everything altered is so deep and interesting.
Though these topics are within this book and are very deep, the story is written in such a beautiful way it is filled with imagination and magic, Jack is in this adjacent world learning everything he never knew or dreamt existed before. He is with the Ugo a spirit being that shapes itself in an unusual form to appear to them kindly, he is caring and loving towards Jack and is a great guide. Everything is just a shimmering, glimmering world in Fire Fly Valley but below Jack can see everything as it moves on without him.
I really enjoyed this book it was just so different to anything I have ever read, I really love the way the story unfolded and how creative it all was. It was sweet, it was sad, it was magical and it was deep. I recommend this book, it’s so different, so creative and so magical, it will take you on a different journey than any other. You will be thinking so much and considering everything as you read, you will be in this magic adjacent world and be transported right to it.
apapergirlapapertown 