Twist
Colby Hodge
Doechester Shomi, Feb 2008, $6.99
ISBN: 9780505527486

In the Chicago area Abbey Shore works hard renovating houses in order to pay for college where she hopes to study architecture like her late dad did before his fatal accident. She is on the job and tired when a wall crumbles revealing a hidden room behind it. Inside is an odd object that suddenly begins to rotate. Before she knows what happened in what seems like a blink, Abbey is one century into her future.

There she sees Dr. Shane Maddox, whom she met in her present at the Sacred Heart Emergency Room when she needed stitches due to an on the job injury. He holds her culpable for his becoming what he has become when an alien stalking her over a hundred years ago took him instead. These aliens have since destroyed humanity but with the arrival of Abbey he has renewed hope.

Told from Abbey's perspective, TWIST is a superb apocalyptic thriller that from the moment her karate class is canceled until the final Tick never slows down as the heroine confronts one crisis after another in a future devastated by pandemic disease and a nasty predator. Abbey is terrific from the onset as time never stands still or moves linear; instead Colby Hodge asserts its one TWIST after another until the circle is either broken or complete.

Harriet Klausner