All Our Hidden Gifts
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4.0 • 31 Ratings
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
I'll give up the tarot readings. I'll apologize to Lily. But Lily doesn't come to school on Monday. Or Tuesday. It's not until Wednesday that the police show up. Maeve Chambers doesn't have much going for her. Not only does she feel like the sole idiot in a family of geniuses, she managed to drive away her best friend Lily a year ago. But when she finds a pack of dusty old tarot cards at school, and begins to give scarily accurate readings to the girls in her class, she realizes she's found her gift at last. Things are looking up – until she discovers a strange card in the deck that definitely shouldn't be there. And two days after she convinces her ex-best friend to have a reading, Lily disappears. Can Maeve, her new friend Fiona and Lily's brother Roe find her? And will their special talents be enough to bring Lily back, before she's gone for good?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Between its supernatural mystery and its engaging, relatable narrator, Caroline O’Donoghue’s first teen novel is difficult to put down. After Maeve happens upon a pack of tarot cards and finds she’s a natural, she’s thrilled by her newfound popularity—suddenly everyone at school wants a reading. But then her ex-best friend Lily disappears following a reading that ends in a fight, and Maeve’s relationship with the cards changes. Could they be the reason for Lily’s disappearance? Is the intolerant cult now recruiting young people in her Irish town involved somehow? As she tries to find her former friend, she navigates the beginning of a romance with Lily’s genderqueer sibling Roe. The book centres on the power of empathy, and while the paranormal intrigue is absorbing, Maeve’s struggles both to fit in, and to harness what makes her special, ring intensely true.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ghostly menace, queer liberation, and sweet nonbinary romance all find room in this modern Irish contemporary. Sixteen-year-old Maeve Chambers, who is white, is behind in class; estranged from her Deaf, white best friend, Lily O'Callaghan; and sentenced to clean her crumbling girls' school's junk closet after throwing a shoe at her teacher. But there, she finds a decades-old tarot deck—and her first real talent. With her new business partner, biracial (Filipina/white) actor Fiona Buttersfield, Maeve starts making friends and money hand over fist reading tarot. But the deck keeps appearing suddenly, and its ominous extra card—the Housekeeper—is drawn in Lily's reading just before Lily disappears. As the Housekeeper infects Maeve's dreams, she must navigate a homophobic American evangelist cult, folkloric components, her growing attraction to Lily's genderqueer sibling, and her own hidden gifts to bring Lily home. O'Donoghue (Scenes of a Graphic Nature) infuses fierce integrity and an understanding of self-worth into a hilarious voice. While at times overfull, the novel's brilliant connections between friendship, boundaries, and the vulnerability of loneliness provide a vibrant compass for fans of Sarah Rees Brennan or Derry Girls. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 14–up.
