The Summoning

The Summoning is a novel by the Canadian writer Kelley Armstrong, published in 2008. It is the first book of her Darkest Powers series, and it is written for young adults.

Chloe Saunders is fifteen and mostly concerned with ordinary things: her film work, her friends, a boy, her hair. Her life changes the day she sees her first ghost, and worse, when the ghost sees her. The reaction that follows is violent enough for adults to call it a breakdown, and Chloe, who has been told she has schizophrenia, is taken to Lyle House, a group home for young people with mental health problems. The house has rules, staff who watch everything, and a set of residents who are more unusual than they look. Chloe works out that the ghosts are not symptoms, that she can see and raise the dead, and that the other teenagers at Lyle House have powers of their own that somebody has been gathering them for.

The novel is the first of a trilogy, and it establishes the rules of its supernatural world through what Chloe is able to work out for herself rather than through what the adults around her are willing to explain.