Publisher's Synopsis
It's been eight years since Juliana Johnston set foot outside her mountaintop mansion. Millions of teenagers know and love her as J.G. Jones, author of the Girls with Unusual Powers series. In those bestselling books, Juliana can bring everything in her vivid imagination to life, while keeping the real world safely at bay. The seeds of her seclusion were sown in childhood, when Juliana, neglected by her billionaire parents and unhappy at boarding school, retreated into books. Meeting Adam brought Juliana love and acceptance at last. But Adam's sudden, tragic death changed everything. Retreating to a remote area of North Carolina, Juliana found herself too panic-stricken to move beyond her open front door. Since then, the house has become both her prison and her sanctuary. Thanks to the internet, she can get everything she needs delivered, and her publishers are happy to keep her identity and whereabouts a secret. Life may be narrow, but sometimes Juliana relishes the peace, even as she wonders if she'll ever dip her feet into the stream behind her property, or walk the trails during the blazing colours of autumn. Then, out of the blue, a teenager lands on her doorstep…a girl who seems to be a stranger but, as Juliana soon discovers, is intimately tied to her past. Juliana has long believed that nothing could make her leave the refuge she's created for herself and venture back into the world that hurt her so badly. But who knows what the reward will be if she takes that first step…or what risk there may be, to herself and others, if she doesn't?
