The Clock That Tick-Tocked

By: Alden Cross

Narrated by: Lindsey Linthicum

Some clocks tick forward. This one remembers backward.

Fourteen-year-old Eli Grant doesn’t believe in haunted clocks or secret auctions. He just wants to survive another shift at his family’s fading antique business without getting yelled at by his sister or disappointing his grandfather again. But when a strange children’s clock—Lot 27—is sold to a bidder who doesn’t blink, time starts pulling him sideways.

Eli’s sketches change on their own. Time ticks in reverse. And the spirals in his drawings don’t feel like art—they feel like memories trying to escape.

Then he finds the invitation.

Slipped into his sketchbook, the Spiral card drags him into the Shadow Auction, a black-market vault of memory-bound relics and masked collectors. At the center of it all is Seraphine, a too-charming villain with secrets Eli can’t afford to forget—and a very specific interest in the clock he never meant to wind.

If Eli can’t unlock the clock’s past, it may unravel his own.

Fast-paced, cinematic, and full of spiral-bending secrets, The Clock That Tick-Tocked is Book One in the Shadow Auction Series—a YA fantasy-thriller saga about fractured memories, forbidden relics, and the price of unlocking the past.

Perfect for fans of Stranger Things, The Maze Runner, and The Night Circus.

©2025 Alden Cross (P)2025 Alden Cross

Not perfect, but it got under my skin

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. The writing isn’t super polished and you can tell it’s from a newer author. There are a few rough spots, especially in the first few chapters. But something about it just worked for me anyway.

The story creeps up on you. It starts small, with this auction and a strange clock, and then slowly pulls you into something way bigger and weirder. I kept thinking I knew what was happening, and then the Spiral stuff would twist it all sideways. It’s not scary exactly, but it’s definitely unsettling in a cool way.

Eli felt really real to me. He’s awkward, kind of lost, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. And by the end, I was honestly surprised how much I cared about what happened to him. Some scenes hit harder than I expected.

If you’re into mysterious objects, memory stuff, and stories that feel like dreams you half-remember later, give this a try. It’s a little messy, but that almost made it better. I’ll remember it, even if I’m not sure what parts of it were ever real.