Like The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Elizabeth Norris's Unraveling blends realistic coming-of-age issues with a gripping science fiction world.
Unraveling's heroine, sixteen-year-old Janelle Tenner, is used to having a lot of responsibility. She balances working as a lifeguard in San Diego with an intense academic schedule. Janelle's mother is bipolar, and her dad is a workaholic FBI agent, which means Janelle also has to look out for her younger brother, Jared.
And that was before she died...and is brought back to life by Ben Michaels, a mysterious, alluring loner from her high school. When she discovers a strange clock that seems to be counting down to the earth's destruction, Janelle learns she has twenty-four days to figure out how to stop the clock and save the planet.
The countdown has begun, but the biggest mystery is Ben himself—the boy who saved her life. What happens when she starts to fall for the one person she can't trust?
