From the award-winning author of The Probability of Everything, which has been called “one of the best books I have read this year (maybe ever)” (Colby Sharp, Nerdy Book Club) and “Powerful” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review),comes a heartfelt exploration of family and change as twelve-year-old Skye reunites with her older brother, Finn, after he spent four years on the run with their father.

Skye Nickson’s world changed forever when her dad went on the run with her brother, Finn. It’s been four years without Finn’s jokes, four years without her father’s old soul music, and four years of Skye filling in as Rent-a-Finn on his MIA birthdays for their mom. Finn’s birthday is always difficult, but at least Skye has her best friends, Reece and Jax, to lean on, even if Reece has started acting too cool for them.

But this year is different because after Finn’s birthday, they get a call that he’s finally been found. Tall, quiet, and secretive, this Finn is nothing like the brother she grew up with. He keeps taking late-night phone calls and losing his new expensive gifts, and he doesn’t seem to remember any of their inside jokes or secrets.

As Skye tries to make sense of it all through the lens of her old Polaroid camera, she starts to wonder: Could this Finn be someone else entirely? And if everyone else has changed, does it mean that Skye has to change too?

Though this was a quick read, it was not a story to take lightly. There are a lot of very real and deep subjects tied into this story as Skye and Finn navigate getting to know each other again and all the struggles each of them face respectively. I could see a lot of kids that might be going through similar aspects of situations really identifying with this story and it’s important to have stories like this that a child can see themselves in. Perhaps they wouldn’t identify with being kidnapped by a parent, but they could definitely identify with the struggle of have separated families, or deal with parents that struggle with mental health.

Happy reading!

What if your fortunes really came true?

Once upon a time, Millie, Nora, and Bea were best friends who loved slumber parties, exploring their Manhattan neighborhood, and making fortune tellers with their Magic Markers. Now, in the summer before seventh grade, they haven’t spoken in over a year—thanks to a big fight, the pandemic shutting down their school, and each girl moving away for different reasons. The girls routinely check each other’s social media, but none of them can muster the courage to reach out, even if they might want to.

Then their long-ago paper fortune tellers start popping up in the most unexpected places. The fortunes carry some eerily accurate wisdom for each girl: Your future is hidden in your past. Hold on to the memories. Go back to where you started. Could this be the push the girls need to reconnect and reunite? Or is the gap between them too wide to mend?

I liked the overall premise of this one, three best friends who have a falling out and then find themselves on diverging paths, then discovering their old fortune tellers which seem to have some magical power. I thought this would be a nice mix of realistic fiction and whimsy and it definitely had some aspects of that but there some elements that didn’t quite get there for me. I really wanted the girls to be more individual, but in some ways they didn’t seem to have unique personalities. That being said I did enjoy the themes, tweens and teens are always going through friendship break ups etc and this displayed them going through the fights, their time apart and them coming back together once they’ve grown a bit. I will say as someone who made many a fortune teller as a kid I enjoyed seeing them represented and the whimsy was a nice touch.

Happy reading!