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Start giftingThe Other Valley
A Novel
Narrator
Cindy Kay
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Length
10 hours 42 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“I listened to this book over a few days. At first it felt like entertaining background noise for my second job. Then I stopped paying attention to what my hands were doing (my boss did not like that). Then I found myself putting in earbuds and walking it around town, and climbing into bed with it playing. I can't get Odile out of my head. Her story left me with this strangely energetic vertigo - and so many thoughts and feelings about my own relationships with grief, control, change, and growing up. I wish I could read it again for the first time! ”
— Kat • Country Bookshelf
Bookseller recommendation
“The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard is hard to describe without giving too much away. It's set in a world where there are valleys set twenty years apart in time, and every once in a while, visitors are allowed to visit the past or the future valleys for very specific reasons. The narrator, Odile, accidentally discovers the identity of two visitors, and it changes her life. All I can comfortably say about the plot is that while the book is obviously about that, it twists in a way I didn't at all see coming. It's a beautiful look at grief and second chances and what we might do differently if we knew the outcomes and what thinking we know the outcome traps us into. It's wonderful and thought-provoking.”
— Anna • Katy Budget Books
Bookseller recommendation
“No Spoilers here: The Other Valley left me in a book hangover for days! A heart wrenching coming of age debut that centers around grief. But is so much more: first love, fate, secrets, family expectations, regret. Imagine that your town is the present time. To the east, your town, but 20 years in the future. To the west, your town, but 20 years in the past. Intriguing, right?! Howard's storytelling and world building reminds me of Celeste Ng and Justin Cronin. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next! ”
— Jenny • E. Shaver, bookseller
Bookseller recommendation
“No Spoilers here: The Other Valley left me in a book hangover for days! A heart wrenching coming of age debut that centers around grief. But is so much more: first love, fate, secrets, family expectations, regret. Imagine that your town is the present time. To the east, your town, but 20 years in the future. To the west, your town, but 20 years in the past. Intriguing, right?! Howard's storytelling and world building reminds me of Celeste Ng and Justin Cronin. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next! ”
— Jenny • E. Shaver, bookseller
*Soon to be a TV series*
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Book of 2024
Jimmy Fallon’s Book Club Top Four Pick
For fans of Never Let Me Go and The Giver, an elegant and exhilarating literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town. Except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present.
Edme—who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile—is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate. Yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.
A breathlessly moving “unique take on the intersection of fate and free will” (Nikki Erlick, author of The Measure), The Other Valley is “a stellar debut, full of heartbreak and hope wrapped up in gorgeous prose” (Christina Dalcher, author of Vox).
Scott Alexander Howard lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his work focused on the relationship between memory, emotion, and literature. The Other Valley is his first novel. Connect with him at ScottAlexanderHoward.com.
