“A boy washes up on the beach wearing nothing but pyjamas. He says he’s from here. But everything feels wrong.”

On 10th January, pre-orders will open for The Boy From Elsewhere, a new Young Adult novel by Kestral Gaian.

Set in a quiet seaside town, the story starts with the sudden appearance of a boy who should not exist. He knows the place. He knows the people. But the world he remembers is not quite the one he’s arrived in. As questions multiply, a chain of events set in motion centuries ago begins to tighten its grip on the present.

Blending speculative fiction, mystery, and queer coming-of-age, The Boy From Elsewhere is a story about parallel worlds, found family, and what happens when reality starts to fracture in unexpected ways. At its heart, it is a novel about connection, trust, and the terrifying courage it takes to hold on to the people you love when the universe itself seems determined to pull you apart.

The book grew out of a live-streamed writing challenge during lockdown, where the first 26,000 words were written in a single sleepless day to raise money for a trans charity. What began as an experiment quickly revealed itself to be something more ambitious and more personal, evolving over several years into a fully realised novel.

Drawing on hidden histories, underground spaces, and the long echoes of the past, the story moves between the ordinary rhythms of teenage life and a much stranger reality beneath the surface. Libraries, tunnels, beaches, and forgotten machines all play their part as the characters uncover truths that were never meant to resurface.

“I wanted to write a story about the moment when your world changes, not with a bang, but with a quiet sense that something isn’t right,” Gaian says. “It’s a book about kindness as much as it is about danger, and about the people who choose to step forward when it would be easier to look away.”

At its core, The Boy From Elsewhere asks what makes a place feel like home, and whether belonging is something we inherit, discover, or create together. This is the first book in a series, with the second and thid parts due in 2027 and 2029 respectively.

Pre-orders for The Boy From Elsewhere open on 10th January 2026 via the Reconnecting Rainbows Press website. The novel will be published worldwide on 7th February 2026.