Summer Davis sees deaths before they happen. She attempts to live a normal life by focusing on the dance team and her quarterback boyfriend. But then the way-too-cheery Angel of Death shows up and tells her she’s a Cipher—a person chosen to help people who are going to die resolve problems with their loved ones. Ashlyn Moore, one of Summer’s classmates, is going to die, and she needs Summer’s help before that happens. It’s nearly impossible to get through to Ashlyn, who surrounds herself with chess nerds and geeks and makes it clear she doesn’t want to be friends. Desperate to complete her Cipher task before it’s too late, Summer turns to Troy, the guy who’s always been there for her and one of the few people she can trust. With his help, she makes progress. In fact, the closer she gets to Ashlyn and her friends, the more she feels like she’s finally found where she belongs. As the clock starts running down on Ashlyn’s life, Summer decides to change her objective. She’s going to save her new friend before it’s too late—even if it means messing with fate.

Summer Davis is a Cipher, a person chosen to help people resolve problems with their loved ones before they die. She’s just gotten her second job when weirder-than-usual things start happening. There seems to be a rift between her and the afterlife, and she’s seeing things she shouldn’t, including people who have already passed on. As she struggles to help her new assignment, Liam, make amends with his incarcerated father, she finds it hard to balance being a high school student, Cipher, and girlfriend. Troy’s been nothing but supportive, but Summer can see her secret weighs on him, and she worries the more she tells him, the sooner he’ll decide he can’t deal with her freaky life. But when a murderer is thrown into the mix, and the girl he killed keeps asking Summer for help, she’ll risk everything to make sure the guy gets what he deserves.

Summer Davis has gotten good at her Cipher job, helping people resolve problems with their loved ones before they die, but it’s taken a toll on her personal life, and she’s not sure she’ll ever recover from her breakup with Troy. Especially now that his music career has taken off and his band’s songs are inescapable. A new guy makes Summer think she might finally be able to move on, but she’s not going to make the same mistake she made with her last relationship—she’s careful to keep her Cipher side a secret from Harper. But when Troy comes back to town and the Angel of Death assigns her a new job that directly involves him, keeping secrets starts wreaking havoc on her relationship and her job. And with death looming around the corner, and the stakes higher than ever, failure just isn’t an option.