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Book Review: All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue

cover art for All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue

All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue

Walker Books, 2021

ISBN: 978-1536213942

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, ebook (Bookshop.org)

 

 

O’Donoghue’s foray into YA literature delivers tricks and treats for fans of Gothic, mystic stories dealing with social themes; but magic doesn’t solve everything this character-driven YA paranormal fantasy set in contemporary Ireland.

 

Sentenced to cleanup duty in detention, 16 year old Maeve discovers an old mixtape, a Tarot deck, and an uncanny knack for reading the cards. When her former best friend Lily goes missing after a heated exchange, classmates soon start avoiding Maeve like she’s some kind of creepy occultist. As she finds herself immersed in a world of fantastic possibilities she doesn’t fully comprehend, Maeve discovers a new friend in artsy Fiona. Ultimately, Maeve confronts a dangerous entity summoned by powerful emotions and explores her uncorked inner magic skills, while becoming increasingly regretful about how she dumped and ostracized Lily.

 

There are supernatural elements to the story at every turn, but this subtle gem explores far more than magic. This is also a book about another secret superpower: empathy. Maeve, who is white and from a comfortably middle class family, navigates themes of diversity with detailed, well-developed characters that include non-binary, bisexual love interest Roe; biracial, Filipina friend Fiona; former BFF Lily who has hearing loss; and queer lesbian sister Jo.  Perspectives on racism, homophobia, and classism are explored in context, in unscripted, messy, and uncomfortably realistic ways.  O’Donoghue deftly creates a tone of authentic growth across these topics instead of patching over tough spots. Maeve fumbles, misunderstands, and makes bad choices, but keeps trying. Growth doesn’t happen easily, and Donoghue sidesteps an investment in “likability”,  so readers journey with the protagonist in learning that while intention matters in magic, it doesn’t count in interpersonal relationships or the fight for social justice.

 

The romantic interludes sometimes feel a bit out of place, but packed with mysticism, magic, queer liberation, and the drama of teen friendships, this contemporary tale will likely have strong appeal for readers looking for complex characters and edgy situations in a speculative framework. Readers of DeAngelis’ Bones & All, Older’s Shadowshaper, Okorafor’s Akata Witch, Power’s Wilder Girls, and Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone will find much to enjoy in Gifts. Ages 14+. Highly recommend.

 

Minimal gore, but contains bullying, references to hate crimes and homophobia.

 

Reviewed by E.F. Schraeder

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

cover art for Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Tales of the Fighting Pumpkins

( Amazon.com  |  Subterranean Press  limited edition hardcover  | Subterranean Press ebook edition )

Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

Subterranean Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1596069978

Available: Direct from Subterranean Press (limited edition hardcover, ebook edition), and Kindle edition

 

Into every high school class a cheerleading squad must come to fight against the forces of darkness: aliens, mud monsters, and eldritch creatures.  Squads that don’t survive until graduation are forgotten, and a mysterious force chooses a new cheer captain to recruit a new squad. This tight-knit group of cheerleaders, who may or may not be supernatural themselves, are the Fighting Pumpkins of Johnson’s Crossing, California. These are their stories.

The stories have been published over time, in different places: I first encountered them in the story “Away Game”, a clever, if predictable, story that appears in A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and have been seeking out their stories since then. I’m so glad they have now been collected together. Originally a limited edition published by Subterranean Press, the collection is now available as an ebook.

Because there have been many cheerleading squads over a long period of time, the stories can be set in a variety of time periods, with different characters. While the majority of the Fighting Pumpkins stories are linked stories about the same varsity squad, with half-vampire cheer captain Jude, squad historian Colleen, Laurie, who has a command voice, supernaturally strong Marti, and undead Heather, a few take place in other time periods and with other squads, such as the titular “Dying With Her Cheer Pants On”, in which the team dies calling Bloody Mary from a mirror during an alien invasion to exterminate the aliens, and “Switchblade Smile”, which features Jude’s mother Andrea, a vampire, as a cheerleader in the 1930s.

Character development is strong, and there is a lot of humor (how can there not be with a team called the Fighting Pumpkins?). McGuire draws from a kitchen-sink universe where any creature of the imagination can be real,  and remixes tropes to create her stories, but the sisterhood of the girls on the cheer squad is what makes the stories of the Fighting Pumpkins really enjoyable. Although a story might center on a specific character, these stories aren’t about a single individual or chosen one bound to save the world on her own. The girls are a team, and they stick together even when things are scary, or dangerous, or one of them turns out to be a monster. Two related stories that involve cheerleader Heather Monroe stood out as favorites, “Gimme a Z”, in which she rises from the grave and defends her sister Pumpkins from an undead mob, and “Turn the World Around”,  an often poetic story in which she helps a girl who mysteriously shows up in a Fighting Pumpkins uniform make a life-and-death decision that will affect the entire community. “School Colors” covers a cheerleading competition between the Fighting Pumpkins and an alien cheerleading squad that could decide the fate of the planet.

The stories of the Fighting Pumpkins are a little scary, but mostly a lot of fun. Those looking for a break from heavy or intense reading will find a lot to like, as will Buffy lovers.  YA readers may enjoy this collection as well.

 

Contains : strong language, violence, some gore. The story “Fiber” received some criticism from First Nations people regarding McGuire’s interpretation of the wendigo.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Midnight Reynolds and the Spectral Transformer (Book 1) by Catherine Holt.

Midnight Reynolds and the Spectral Transformer: Book One by Catherine Holt
Albert Whitman & Company, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0807551257
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

Midnight Reynolds was born at the stroke of midnight on Halloween. Her name and birthday have always made her stand out, when all she wants is to fit in. When her slightly wacky family– vegetarian recipe blogger mom, her fiance Phil (a mechanic who enjoys dressing like a Viking) and older sister Taylor– move to a new town, two popular girls, Sav and Lucy, immediately draw her in, and Midnight finds herself “fitting in” for the first time. The only problem is that Sav and Lucy both come from well-to-do backgrounds, while Midnight’s family is a little more financially stretched. So when Sav invites her to a week at a ski chalet over their winter vacation, Midnight has to find a job to earn the $200 she’ll need to buy things for the trip.  She takes a job with Miss Appleby, a neighbor with a broken leg. Miss Appleby was also born at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, and she tells Midnight that their birthday uniquely qualifies them to see ghosts, or “spectral energy”, and capture it. Miss Appleby has been doing this on her own, but now that she’s broken her leg, until she heals, she needs Midnight to do the ghost hunting. She explains to Midnight that spectral energyis dangerous. It possesses objects, and in order to remove it, Midnight will have to use a camera-like item called a spectral transformer to capture it. Once the spectral energy has been trapped on a glass plate, it can be separated later and held in a lead-lined tank in Miss Appleby’s yard.

While she’s working hard at fitting in and earning money (tw0 things that don’t necessarily match up) Midnight has additionally been partnered with the school goth, Tabitha, for a local history project. Midnight’s incredible organizational and spreadsheet skills (a weirdness she doesn’t share with her friends) and Tabitha’s interest in cemeteries and dead people are both valuable for the project, and it turns out that the two girls actually get along pretty well. Midnight can’t understand why Tabitha prefers her all-black look over friendship with Sav and Lucy, but most readers will pick that up right away, because you can’t not like Tabitha, and Sav and Lucy are pretty self-absorbed. Tabitha is into research and libraries (according to Tabitha, the librarian “may be a hacker, or a ninja”) and is also adventurous, so she turns out to be a perfect accomplice for Midnight as it turns out that Miss Appleby may not be telling the truth.

Midnight is an exasperating character, but we do get to see character growth.  I enjoyed seeing her change as she encountered unlikely aspects of characters who could have been left undeveloped.  Tabitha could have been a stereotypical goth girl, but Holt gives her context and a unique personality. Midnight’s soon-to-be-stepfather, who she is impatient with through the whole book, turns out to have hidden depths. Even cute boy Logan has more substance than I typically expect in a book this short. There are plenty of characters who still need fleshing out, but since this is the first book in a series, I expect we’ll see more of that in later volumes.

This isn’t a terribly scary book, but it does have its moments. Miss Appleby is responsible for some deeply disturbing actions, and Holt has strong descriptive powers. Midnight Reynolds and the Spectral Transformer  is an entertaining read for a tween looking for ghostbusting adventure and mild scares, and now that she’s come into her own, I’ll be interested to see what happens in book two. Recommended.