The Empty Place

Starred review from August 1, 2024

Gr 4-7-Henry often felt eclipsed by her father, a YouTuber famous for his daring (and sometimes illegal) adventures. When he goes missing in the woods on her 11th birthday, Henry's feelings are complicated. They become even more so when on the one-year anniversary of his disappearance, he emerges from the woods, rambling. Trying to understand what happened, Henry, now 12, goes into the woods and finds herself in another world: This Place, where lost things end up until they can find their way back home. As if This Place weren't strange enough, the inhabitants say it's getting stranger: white beasts have emerged at night, and the moon is missing. Henry must work with the people she meets there to try to fix things, and in doing so, she uncovers her own flaws alongside uncomfortable truths about her father. This novel isn't so much a story about loss as it is about what it means to be lost. Henry has no voice at home, and her metaphorical sense of loss leads her to experience it in a real way. As Henry learns more about her father, she understands that she can't stay silent about his choices, and staying silent about her own hurts both her and her new friends. The conclusion may leave readers wishing for more closure, but the rest of Henry's journey is deeply satisfying. VERDICT This is a story that will resonate with many readers, especially those who enjoy fantasy and coming-of-age stories.-Kristin Brynsvold

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2024
A girl whose father disappeared in the woods for a year needs to know where he went--and why. Henrietta Lightfoot's father went missing while caving in a forest; he was creating content for his popular YouTube channel, "Discovery Joe." She isn't bold or outgoing like her dad, though--she loves the companionable silence she shares with her best friend, Ibtihaj, who's also the only person to call her by the name she prefers, Henry. At her 12th birthday party, exactly a year after his disappearance, Henry's dad appears, in terrible physical condition and saying things that make no sense. In the hospital, he directs Henry to look in his bag, where she finds his special gift for her: an exquisite necklace, wrapped in a map of Quinvandel, the forest where he vanished. Armed with the map, Henry sets off to retrace her dad's steps. She ends up in a land of the lost, where mysterious things happen. While some plot points feel underdeveloped, Cole's latest is infused with beautiful language that accentuates the somber tone. Introspective readers who are seeking a weighty, serious adventure of self-discovery will appreciate this work, in which individuals strive to overcome challenges as they seek their truths. Henry is white, and there's racial and ethnic diversity among the supporting cast. A solemn and compelling read.(Fiction. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2024
Grades 5-8 In the middle of Henry's twelfth birthday party, her wilderness-explorer father--missing for a year and presumed dead--staggers into their midst, babbling incoherently. His unexpected return triggers what amounts to an existential crisis in Henry, who is filled with questions about why he left her and her mother for so long and what if he leaves again? Perhaps if she were a better, more adventurous, daughter (i.e., more like him) he'd be content to stay. It's the latter thought that leads Henry into Quinvandel Forest (the woods that had swallowed her father), and it's what sends her plummeting into a location that shouldn't exist: the Empty Place. Cole's eerie fantasy realm is a literal world for lost souls, and it's both a place of community and bewildering dangers. As Henry makes friends and endeavors to follow in her father's footsteps, she must confront truths about herself and her father to find her way out. Readers captivated by cerebral tales and dark fantasy will be drawn to Cole's latest, which, while heavy-handed in its metaphor, offers thought-provoking adventure.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 2, 2024
A year after mysteriously vanishing into the woods near their home, white-cued Henrietta “Henry” Lightfoot’s explorer father unexpectedly returns on her 12th birthday. He claims to have “found the land of Truth” and gives her a strange map and silver necklace. Determined to understand his compulsive wanderlust and to find out more about where he disappeared to, Henry follows his footsteps into the forest. She soon falls into This Place, an alternate world filled with lost people, creatures, and objects—and quickly learns that there’s no guaranteed way home. Now Henry must retrace her dad’s travels in This Place if she hopes to recreate his miraculous escape. Accompanied by two fellow lost children, Henry delves into This Place’s increasingly hazardous nooks and crannies, uncovering mysteries and testing her own limits. In a dreamlike portal fantasy, Cole (Where the Lockwood Grows) examines the nature of home and what it means to be lost. Henry’s drive to be “not an earthworm anymore, but a butterfly” like her father is a powerful sentiment that thoughtfully coincides with further interpretations of how to respect one’s surroundings, even as one steps off the established path. Ages 8–12. Agent: Patrice Caldwell, New Leaf Literary.

January 1, 2025
Henry Lightfoot has always been the "earthworm" to her father's "social butterfly," more interested in making art at home than joining him on far-reaching adventures. But after he wanders out of Quinvandel Forest on her twelfth birthday -- the same forest into which he'd disappeared exactly one year earlier -- she ventures into the woods to determine where he had been and prove her bravery. Henry quickly finds herself in a Neverland-like realm referred to as simply "This Place" by its inhabitants, who are all lost beings trying to find their way back. Cole revels in developing the delightfully arbitrary rules of This Place (e.g., no one needs food to survive, and a native berry makes human-animal communication possible). Meanwhile, equally strange yet increasingly sinister occurrences are indicative of a new mysterious instability to which Henry, along with fellow lost children Wolfson and Ndidi, must discover a solution. "Home is the best North Star," writes Henry's father, a man whose initial charm Cole gradually complicates, causing Henry to acknowledge his more callous traits. Home may be no paradise for Henry, Wolfson, or Ndidi, but Cole contends that only through embracing where they are from -- and who they resolve to become -- will they find guidance, safety, and healing from literal and figurative loss. Emma Shacochis

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)