The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfield

In the book, The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfield, Jessica Day moves with her family to Bixby, Oklahoma after her mother gets a job offer at a high-tech aerospace company. Soon after the move, Jessica awakens to find time frozen and rain stopped in mid air. Although she thinks it is a dream, she is suspicious when she wakes to find her clothes wet. The next night, it happens again. This time she leaves her room, and she finds that her family is frozen, and the only other living thing is a cat, which leads her out of her house before transforming into a snake, revealing that it is really a slither. This slither, with the help of more snakes and a darkling in the form of the cat, attack her. Jessica is rescued by the "Midnighters.” These “Midnighters” are Dess, Rex, and Melissa. They chase away the animals with thirteen letter words and steel.

The next day, they explain to Jessica that in Bixby time freezes for an hour, and only the “Midnighters”, people born at the moment of midnight, can enter it. In this Secret Hour live creatures known as darklings, who hate people, and fear new inventions, like steel, and the number thirteen. It was the darklings who took one hour out of each 25-hour-day and hid inside it, where people couldn't get to them, and technology does not work. They also explain that each Midnighter has a special power. Dess is a polymath, Rex is a Seer, and Melissa is a mind caster. They don't know what Jessica's power is, except that it isn't the same as any of theirs.

The next midnight, Jonathan, a boy from Jessica's school, arrives outside her house, and takes her flying with him. Jonathan is an Acrobat, and in the Secret Hour gravity does not have a strong hold on him. Jonathan and Rex don't get along, and the other Midnighters avoid talking about him. After flying for most of the hour, the pair are chased by a darkling, and narrowly escape. They are then arrested by policemen enforcing Bixby's eleven o'clock curfew. Jessica is grounded for the rest of the month. Meanwhile, the Midnighters are becoming suspicious about why the darklings, who normally avoid Midnighters, want to kill Jessica?

Rex decides to take Jessica out to the Snake Pit, a place the badlands, where he will be able to discover her power. Unfortunately, the badlands are also the home to the darklings. Dess sets up protection beforehand, and the Midnighters plan to be inside it before the Secret Hour arrives. However, they are all late, and rely on Jonathan to fly them inside the protection. The darklings are so desperate to attack Jessica that they suicidally attack the defenses, weakening them considerably. Just before the defenses collapse, Rex discovers Jessica's power is Flame-bringer, but none of the group knows how they can make a fire. As the defenses are breached, Jessica realizes that this means she can bring technology to the Secret Hour. She uses a flashlight to kill the darklings, and the Midnighters leave safely.

When I read about this book, I thought I would really enjoy it, but it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it was going to be like. I’m not the type to really enjoy science fiction books, and this book is like a science fiction book. I would recommend this book for anyone that does like science fiction books. One question I had for Scott Westerfield was only the people who were born at midnight midnighters or were people born at 12:15 also midnighters?