"Tell me, kid... How do you feel about desecrating a graveyard?”
Suffocated by her narcissistic mother's constant complaints, Grace retreats into the refuge of her mind. Her imagination becomes her only source of escape, and there she meets a grizzly treasure hunter, Mitch, with a history of rescuing strays. He takes Grace under his wing, allowing her to accompany him on his search for a long-lost artefact.
Split between her mundane reality and the exhilarating new world she has created, Grace leads an exciting double life. In one, she is a normal teenager, but in the other, she travels with Mitch, slowly discovering more about the shadowy world he is involved in and those hunting him down.
The lines between reality and imagination blur as Grace continues to delve into her daydreams whenever reality is too hard to deal with, but soon, she finds other worlds. However, they are not as welcoming as she expected, and escape may not be quite so simple...
A dark, adventure-filled coming of age fantasy, perfect for fans of the His Dark Materials series, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Coraline.
Review By Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Grace is fifteen years old, and her reality is filled with a mother who drinks and finds fault with everything she and her father do. No matter what Grace does she is always criticized so she has created a fantasy world to escape to.
Now Grace lives in both a reality and a fantasy world which made this story very interesting. And although it was a long book over five hundred pages the story moved smoothly and quickly.
Grace finds herself in a fantasy where she meets Mitch a treasure hunter who is willing to take her under his wings. The excitement is everything Grace could ever have dreamed of and the more she spends in her fantasy the more she wants to stay. Mitch arranges to become her foster father, and he takes his job very seriously. He insists that she has homeschooling, eats properly and he always makes sure she is safe.
As a treasure hunter Mitch is always in danger of being found by the Sterlings putting Grace in as much danger as him. The Sterlings will stop at nothing to claim whatever treasure he is after and killing is not unheard of. The treasure that Mitch is after will take them on an adventure she could never have expected.
Switching back and forth from reality to fantasy is done so gracefully by the author that when the switch occurs there is not a moment of confusion. Not only does Grace’s mother find her lacking but now they are visiting her grandparents in Scotland who find both Grace and her mother lacking. Other than her father who works a lot Grace gets very little support from family but gets more support from Mitch in her fantasy world.
Although Grace loves spending time with Mitch her fantasies sometimes take a dark and scary turn. She witnesses a monster eating people and is unable to switch back to reality as quickly as she usually does. Then she finds herself locked up with a girl in chains claiming that she is being experimented on, and it could happen to Grace. Once again Grace can’t switch back to reality as quickly as she wants.
The story between Grace’s reality and fantasy was quite interesting, her adventures with Mitch in the search for treasure was filled with both danger and excitement but Grace always figured that she could not get hurt in her fantasy or die but the book never explicitly mentioned whether that was true.
Grace and Mitch had a wonderful relationship in her fantasy world, he cared for her more than her own mother something she was unused to and something that she cherished. There is more coming, and I anxiously await the next book in the series which hopefully will not be long.
The Worlds Behind Her Eyelids 
