The Lovely Dark

When twelve-year-old Eleanor Newton thinks she see her deceased grandmother, she misses her chance to speak with her one last time. Soon after, Ellie finds herself and her best friend Justin lost in the underworld.

The pair are split up by the voices guiding their journey and Ellie arrives at Eventide House, a somewhat boarding school for children who have died. The Underworld is beautiful, but Ellie is plagued by the feeling that something isn’t right, leading her to search for a way back to her family in the world of the Living. Matthew Fox’s haunting and lyrical prose, exemplified in his debut The Sky Over Rebecca, guides readers through the complicated emotional landscape of grief and life after the pandemic with sincerity and a promise of hope.