Midnight at the Houdini - Hardcover

Dawson, Delilah S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 059348679X ISBN 13: 9780593486795

Verlag: Delacorte Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A girl discovers a surreal hotel where no one ever leaves. When the clock strikes midnight, she'll be trapped there forever unless she's able to break free from magic that in turn breaks all her rules. Perfect for fans of Caraval and The Starless Sea!

Life has gone according to plan for Anna—she stays in the background, letting her sister, Emily, shine in the spotlight. But on Emily’s wedding night, Anna learns that her sister is moving away, abandoning her—and all their shared dreams. Devastated, Anna leaves the reception in the middle of a raging storm, taking shelter in a hotel she’s never seen before: the Houdini.

The Houdini is a hotel unlike any other, with sumptuous velvet couches, marble tiled floors, secret restaurants, winding passageways, and an undercurrent of magic in the air. And when Anna meets Max, who has lived his entire life inside its walls, she’s captivated. For the first time in her life, Anna is center stage, in a place that anticipates her every desire, with a boy who only has eyes for her.

But there’s a terrifying secret hidden in the Houdini. When the clock strikes midnight, Anna will be trapped there forever unless she can find a way to break free from its dreamlike magic. But will she be able to do it if it means leaving Max behind?

Enchanting, mysterious, and utterly fantastic, Midnight at the Houdini will cast its spell on you.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Delilah S. Dawson thought she would be a visual artist, but she somehow ended up a writer. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Mine, Camp Scare, Star Wars: Phasma, and seventeen other books for kids, teens, and adults, as well as the comics Ladycastle, Sparrowhawk, and Star Pig. She loves gluten-free cake, adventures, the beach, Disney World, Star Wars, and vintage My Little Pony. She lives in Atlanta with her family. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @DelilahSDawson or visit her online at whimsydark.com.

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1.


The night is perfect and glorious and sparkling, too beautiful to be real. Like magic.

Anna is ten years old, and this is the fanciest birthday party she’s ever attended. The castle-like home’s sprawling grounds host a miniature Ferris wheel, unicorn rides, a cotton candy machine, and a stage, all surrounded by twinkling lights and spotlights twirling into the indigo clouds. She was invited not because she knows the birthday girl, but because her dad’s latest hotel is a huge success, the most popular hotel in Vegas, and because her family just moved into a similar mansion down the street, leaving their old three-bedroom ranch behind. Her dad is over by the pizza ovens, surrounded by smiling strangers desperate to be his friend.

Anna is very much hoping to experience something similar.

It’s early summer, and next year, she’ll start at a new private school with . . . well, basically all the girls at this party. Anna looks around, nervously fusses with her tiara. The elegant invitation looked like it came straight from Cinderella’s castle, and it proclaimed this to be a Princess Party. Anna has therefore dressed up as a princess. Her mom insisted on a professional fitting for her dress, which has a huge skirt with rainbow layers of tulle, as well as an updo and makeup appointment at the salon. Anna’s mom is taking their recent change in status very seriously, and Anna wants to impress her new classmates, so she went along with it.

She doesn’t see any kids her age, though--just the adults on the patio and dozens of little kids running everywhere, shouting, trailed by frazzled nannies. Following the sound of a booming pop song, she ends up at a pool so big her old house could’ve fit inside it. There are grottoes and slides and a diving board and a DJ. Two large groups of kids around her age cluster in tight circles on either side of the pool, girls on one side and boys on the other. Anna is closest to the boys’ side, and there’s one boy, with perfectly floppy blond hair and ice blue eyes who’s so beautiful she thinks he must be a movie star. He’s the leader, the one all the others are clustered around, and he looks at her with curiosity.

Anna puts on her best, most confident smile and says, “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says back.

Someone gasps, and the girls sashay over to the boys’ side of the pool, circling Anna like wolves and clutching drinks that look alcoholic but surely aren’t.

“Are you flirting with my boyfriend? At my birthday party? Josh, was she flirting with you?”

Anna freezes and realizes she’s made a huge mistake. The birthday girl is furious with her. No one else is wearing a princess dress, a tiara, or even a token touch of celebration.

Tank tops and short shorts with heeled sandals are the unspoken dress code. The girls remind her of matching gingerbread cookies, their hair in flat, smooth shades of honey and gold and their skin deeply tan. They wear makeup--fake eyelashes, shiny lip gloss--like they’re in high school, not fifth grade. The boys look athletic and untouchable, and now that Anna has been singled out, they too stare, silent and judging.

“We just said hi,” the beautiful boy says with a shrug. “No big deal.”

Anna is frozen in place, knowing in this moment that everything about her is wrong. Her dress, her face, even her unlightened hair. All the kids stare at her with secondhand embarrassment or outright hostility. In the silence, as they wait to see what Anna will do, one girl cackles behind a manicured hand.

“I’m Anna Alonso. My dad is Daniel Alonso. We RSVP’d--”

“Oh, so your dad has that tacky new hotel. My dad made me invite you. How old are you? Like, six?”

The birthday girl’s mouth twists in a mocking smile. There are more cackles and titters. The girls openly glare at Anna, look her up and down, and she wants to die. She should not have agreed with her father’s request to come. She should not have allowed her mother to doll her up like a baby. She should have begged her older sister, Emily, to come. Everyone likes Emily, and Emily knows how to fit in. If Emily was here, Anna wouldn’t be the object of mockery. Emily wouldn’t let anyone speak to Anna like that. Maybe she would’ve told Anna not to wear this stupid dress.

But no. Emily was mad at Anna and ignoring her, and now Anna’s reputation is ruined before she’s even set foot in school.

The twinkling lights fade away. The scent of popcorn goes rancid. The night is dizzying now, huge and threatening and intolerable.

Without answering, Anna turns and marches away from the vicious girls and untouchable boys posing by the perfect pool.

“So embarrassing,” a girl says behind her.

“So immature,” says another.

“Oh my God, if that was me, I would move.”

Anna won’t turn around, won’t let them see her cry. She stomps past the squeaky Ferris wheel that no one is riding. She gives a wide berth to the unicorn rides, noting that the ponies’ horns have elastic straps and their manure looks like any other manure. She sidesteps hired princesses in ball gowns with visible zippers, sweat smearing the heavy makeup around their wigs. There must be a corner of this enormous yard that offers some escape from the wretched girls and their cruel whispers.

There. She spies a gazebo in a far corner.

It’s wrapped in lights like a fly in a spider’s web, like everything else, but half the bulbs are out, leaving a convenient slice of shadow. Anna slides onto the bench, her skirt catching on the rough wood, and sighs in relief, slumping down so that no one will see her and do that horrible thing adults do where they ask in a singsong voice what’s wrong.

The tears won’t wait any longer. They pour out, and she scrubs at the glitter on her cheeks, the bubblegum-pink lipstick on her lips. She would yank down her hair, but she knows it’s held in place by a thousand bobby pins and a gallon of hair spray.

Her hands come away smeared with black and pink and iridescent glitter.

Oh no. She’s still got to walk out of this party next to her father. She’s a complete mess, and he’s going to be furious at her for making him look bad. Her job here was to present well and make friends--he made that perfectly clear--and she is an enormous failure.

“Pick a card, any card.”

Anna looks up, tears streaming and snot bubbling, to find a magician standing there.

Or, more accurately, a man with white hair dressed like an old-fashioned magician, right down to the dusty tailcoat and tall black hat. Anna is certain that the girls would have horrible things to say about him, so maybe that’s why he’s also in this dark corner of the yard. She looks back toward the pool, terrified that the other kids will see her talking to what amounts to a clown.

With an aggrieved sigh, she selects a card from the perfect fan he presents. “Am I supposed to look at it?”

The man smiles through his curling white mustache. “Of course. One of us needs to know what it is!”

Hiding the card behind her hand, Anna turns it over. It’s the queen of diamonds, but instead of the usual harsh-faced royalty drawn in stark lines of red and black, there’s an elegant yellow canary wearing an ornate gold crown and surrounded by branches with delicate white blossoms. The intricate illustration is pressed into the thick paper, and the card feels old and important.

“Now put it...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Delacorte Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 059348679X
• ISBN 13: 9780593486795
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland