I have been reading this book in manuscript on my Kindle and loving it. Ms Heckenbach has created a fantasy world with a couple of extremely cool twists. While truly fantasy, the book is not set on another planet or in Earth's past. Rather little settlements, carefully hidden, exist throughout our world. Most of Finding Angel takes place within one of these "pockets", a small island.

When we first meet Angel, she is living in Florida , taken in as a foundling several years earlier when she was very small. When she arrived in that mundane part of Earth, she was wearing a charm bracelet with the name Angel on it. Aware that she came from elsewhere but not knowing from where, Angel often wonders about her past and her parents.

Then several events happen all at once. Her young stepbrother finds a strange 4 inch beetle that sings to him. Something or someone seems to be creeping around in Angel's neighborhood. There's a traffic accident within yards of Angel and very close to her house. And finally, the most mysterious and terrifying event of all--something or someone drags her forcibly right through a tree and into another world. A world populated by the Empowered, the land in which she was born and out of which she barely escaped as a toddler from a strange man mad for power .

Between chapters that follow Angel's adventures are small vignettes which focus on conversations between two mysterious people. Who are they? Where are they? And how do they fit into the puzzle that is Angel's life?

Is Angel one of the Empowered? Does the one who chased her right of her world know that she is still alive and back on the island? What are his plans? Do they tie in with a stolen artifact & a book of prophecy? Can Angel's new friends: young Gregor, Mr. Benjamin, and Kalek the elf help her? Or must Angel discover her own particular strength, learn the secret of her bracelet and discern by herself who is friend and who is foe?

Opening "Finding Angel" is like opening a living jigsaw puzzle. Reading it becomes the delight of joining the enchanted pieces even as they change shape into dragons and mushrooms, or whisper clues with the rustle of leaves, or merge of their own into pictures within pictures sparkling with magic.

"Find" this book and start assembling the puzzle! ( )