A fun, easy read for lovers of the paranormal.
At the start of high school, Grace James is forced to move back to her parents' hometown in the middle of nowhere, Northern Wisconsin. Being that she's dendrite, and couldn't keep her powerful thoughts to herself, she set in motion a series of events that ran her family out of the very human city of Chicago. This stifling, small town of Shady Woods exists to allow the above-normals to live some semblance of a "normal" life, but at least Grace will learn how to use her dendrite powers in class, which sort of makes her feel like a superhero.
All the weird, ab-normal culture ends up being too much for her, though, and after a terrible first week of school and an even more horrible first date, she tries to run away-back to her best friend and her old life. Only, the humans she meets at the truck stop are creepy, and the wild abnormals who want to eat those humans even creepier. Her new friends come to her rescue and her parents finally tell her why she can never go back. Resigned to her fate, she tries to avoid making waves. Unfortunately for Grace, the alluring boy she's paired with in skills class has an awful girlfriend who's determined to make her life miserable. Not to mention vandalism and arson begin to threaten the community, and Grace stumbles into the midst of it.
Is it the group of boys everyone's labeled trouble, the purists who think abnormals should be ruled by their sometimes murderous instincts, or The Hand of Humanity, a hidden sect of normals trying to rid the world of those they fear the most? And can the four young abnormals work together in order to preserve their way of life, or is this just the excuse Grace needs to get back home?