From the Recommended Reading List: A Look at All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue
Here is a highlight on one of our young-adult titles from the Recommended Reading List: All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue.
Locus reviewer Colleen Mondor gave All Our Hidden Gifts an enthusiastic review in June 2021.
As Caroline O’Donoghue’s All Our Hidden Gifts begins, readers are introduced to Maeve Chambers, an otherwise typical Irish teenager who suffers from a bit of impulse control when it comes to her temper. After a failed attempt at obtaining popularity a few years earlier, during which she sacrificed her relationship with her lifelong best friend Lily, Maeve has been furious with herself and everyone around her. Another angry outburst in class has now landed her a detention assignment to clean out a dismal storeroom, and she’s determined to make as quick a job as possible of it. It is there that she discovers a set of tarot cards that end up wreaking all sorts of havoc on her life and town. This darkly exciting novel takes off from that moment, and includes all sorts of paranormal twists and turns, plus a very frightening look at contemporary culture conflicts.
From the publisher: Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card—and then disappears. After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily’s gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.
Don’t forget to vote in the Locus Awards for your favorite titles from 2021 at the Locus Awards Poll & Survey.
[sponsored post, email for promotion details]
