PULL

A teenaged girl relocates to London with her family to be with her dying grandfather, where she witnesses a violent crime, blacks out, then sees a repeat of the crime with an alternate ending; as she seeks answers to this apparent “pulling” back of the event, her troubled brother is kidnapped, and she must work with an underground group of London's protectors to save him.

When Rosie Clayton and her family relocate to London for the summer, it’s anything but a vacation. Her grandfather is dying of cancer, and her brother – who struggles with substance abuse – is going through a reform program. On their first night in the typically quiet village of Blackheath, Rosie witnesses a girl get mugged. As Rosie tries to help, she falls to the ground, overwhelmed by a deafening noise and a dizzying blur of colors. It’s over in a flash of light, and somehow, the scene has rewound itself. The crime unfolds again, exactly as it did before – except this time, a dreamy and mysterious guy intervenes and saves the girl. Albert is tall and strong, and judging from the way he handles the muggers, he’s accustomed to fighting. Admitting that she saw two endings to the same event seems insane, but Rosie can’t deny Albert’s existence for long, especially when he uses his ability to manipulate time, or “pulling,” to save her life. When evil beings known as Mortiferi start to hunt Rosie and her brother, she turns to Albert for help – but is her own developing crush going to get in the way? And why does it seem that Albert has secretive ties to Rosie’s grandparents? After the Mortiferi take her brother hostage, Rosie must draw from a reservoir of courage she didn’t know she had, and vows to save her brother’s life – even if it requires sacrificing her own. Anne Riley is an author of young adult fiction cleverly disguised as a high school Spanish teacher. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband and two daughters.