You Before Me

You Before Me by Julieann Wallace Mama said we are all earth stories. A beginning and an end. Eighteen-year-old Ari enters a world fracturing during The Unfolding, where there are four versions of everyone-who can she trust? ARI FLORA COHEN is captured in the forbidden Beyond. Finally released, she staggers home through elaborate underground tunnels, reeling from the lie about the non-existence of the world outside her home. What other lies has her mama told? ELIAS WOLFE GREEN is Ari's protector. He finds her wild and unconventional and disagreeable. Nevertheless, he has a job to do, no matter how many times she tells him she hates him. Elias follows the rules. Ari breaks them. Ari has questions. Elias has answers, including the truth about her father who was taken before her birth, but he cannot speak of his knowledge. So Ari must find the answers herself. She discovers she is living in a time called The Unfolding, where the truth of the world is being unwrapped, layer by layer, after the time of The Boxing, when the earth was made singular by the covering of the stars and the universe with light pollution and surveillance satellites, when the truth of everything was hidden. And Ari discovers, her mama of love and light, is not who she thinks she is. Distraught, wanting answers, Ari must dress as a boy and return to The Beyond. But disaster strikes. Now you, dear reader, must choose the ending ...