SHADOW'S EDGE was a fun story that combined the paranormal with typical high school activities like football, cheer-leading, and boyfriends. Leah Spencer is a Creatuir Shaman. She was born with the ability to mediate disputes between the Light and Dark Creatuirs. However, after she inadvertantly spent a year in the realm of the Light Creatuirs and missed her sixteenth birthday and lost her boyfriend to a more available girl, she is determined to be normal. She wants to attend high school and have all those experiences.

Leah is lucky to be escorted to school by Alex - the son of an old friend of her father who just happens to be the star of the football team. The school is obsessed with football. The team has a 30-some game winning streak. In fact a new, huge stadium is being built so that they will have an even larger presence. Leah makes friends with the in-crowd and tries really hard to fit in. She also meets a boy named Ben who is not part of the in-crowd and becomes friends with him too.

But the Light and Dark Creatuirs (I don't know how to put accent marks over the e and the u.) aren't about to let her go. She gets drawn back in when a friend of hers who lives in the Light Realm is murdered and drawn in even more deeply when the king of the Dark Realm is murdered too. Leah has to find a way to stop the Light and the Dark Realms from going to war.

I really liked Leah. She was eager to be "normal" but she had a very wry sense of humor and a strong sense of responsibility. I liked her family with her father being the normal one and her mother and sisters being like her and part of the paranormal world. I liked the strong, loving relationship she had with her sisters even though they had their disagreements and sibling rivalries.

The book was very descriptive and well-written. I could easily see the characters and the realms that Lipinski was describing. In fact, I may be seeing some of them in my dreams. The plot to uncover who was trying to get the Light and Dark Creatuirs to go to war was engaging. Leah followed the clues to save the day with the help of Slade who was sent by the Dark Creatuir king to keep Leah on task and by her new cheer-leading friend Brooke.

Fans of the paranormal who like smart, quirky heroines will really enjoy this story. ( )