All our hidden gifts

Review by Booklist Review

Maeve, an average girl at St. Bernadette's Catholic school in Ireland, is always in trouble for her jocular personality and because of how difficult it is for her to learn regular school subjects. After she throws her shoe at a teacher (though, as she objects, "I didn't hit him!"), she's given the punishment of cleaning out a closet in the moldering basement of the Victorian house where her school is located. Along with decades of junk, she finds plenty of 1990s contraband . . . and a pack of tarot cards. Thanks to YouTube, she learns the meanings behind the different cards quickly, and is telling fortunes (for a price) at school the next day. In the weeks that follow, Maeve embarks on a tentative romance with Roe, the elder, genderfluid sibling of her ex-best friend, Lily. When Lily is drawn to the tarot readings, old hurts resurface, and Maeve wishes Lily gone--a wish that, weirdly, seems to come true. Did the creepy Housekeeper tarot card come to life and steal Lily? Is Maeve truly a witch? There's an air of creepy mysticism to this uncommonly well-crafted urban fantasy, and O'Donoghue deftly weaves real-world and paranormal story aspects together. Recommended for all libraries.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. Agent: Bryony Woods, Diamond Kahn & Woods Literary. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up--Getting detention is not out of character for Maeve Chambers, but when she is assigned to clean out the closet in the basement of her private school, she finds a mixtape and a deck of tarot cards that set her on a dark path. O'Donoghue expertly blurs the lines between the real and the unreal as readers are swept up in Maeve's journey to undo the wrongs she thoughtlessly causes, from causing the disappearance of her former best friend to unintentionally empowering the cultish leader of a conservative youth group that promotes hate speech and cruelty. With a deft hand, O'Donoghue crafts a narrative that is steeped in both classic gothic atmosphere and contemporary representation: Maeve, who is white, grapples with her privilege against the backdrop of the paranormal as she considers the ways in which Roe, her nonbinary love interest; Fiona, her Filipina friend; Jo, her queer sister; and Lily, her former BFF with hearing loss have to navigate the complex and sometimes hostile landscape of modern Ireland. Stefanie Caponi's tarot card illustrations are hauntingly perfect companions to the text. Much like the novel, the cards appear deceptively familiar at first glance. The stakes are high, the narrative is nuanced, and the climax and resolution are refreshingly unexpected. VERDICT Expect readers to fall into this blurred tale of the normal and the paranormal.--Jen McConnel, Queen's Univ., Ont.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

When Maeve finds a tarot deck in the basement of her Kilbeg, Ireland, school, she immediately feels a connection to the cards and begins telling fortunes for the girls in her class. Lily, Maeve's ex-best friend, is peer-pressured into getting a reading, and when the pair's conflicts come out into the open, Maeve tells Lily that she wishes she'd just disappear. The next school day, Lily is nowhere to be found. Maeve teams up with Lily's musically talented, gender-nonconforming sibling to solve the mystery of the girl's disappearance, which they believe has some connection to the sinister "Housekeeper" card that exists in Maeve's deck but isn't part of traditional tarot decks. They encounter a conservative cult and must sort out major misunderstandings to discover Lily's whereabouts and uncover other truths, including some they're hiding from themselves. This atmospheric, witty, disarming tale is a page-turning dive into occult forces portrayed alongside teenage concerns. Both modern Irish politics and the meanings of tarot cards are incorporated into the story without becoming burdensome. Impeccable dialogue and true-to-life characters make this a great choice for YA readers with a mystical bent. Sarah Berman September/October 2021 p.100(c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An Irish teen grapples with past misdeeds and newfound ties to magic. When 16-year-old Maeve discovers a deck of tarot cards stashed with a mixtape of moody indie music from 1990, she starts giving readings for her classmates at her all-girls private school. Though her shame over dumping her strange friend Lily during an attempt to climb the social ladder at St. Bernadette's is still palpable, it doesn't stop her from trying to use the tarot in her favor to further this goal. However, after speaking harsh words to Lily during a reading, Maeve is horrified when her former friend later disappears. As she struggles to understand the forces at play within her, classmate Fiona proves to be just the friend Maeve needs. Detailed, interesting characters carry this contemporary story of competing energy and curses. Woven delicately throughout are chillingly eerie depictions of the Housekeeper, a figure who shows up on an extra card in the deck, echoing the White Lady legend from Irish folklore. Even more disturbing is an organization of young people led by a homophobic but charismatic figurehead intent on provoking backlash against Ireland's recent civil rights victories. Most characters are White; Fiona is biracial, with a Filipina mother and White Irish father. Roe, Maeve's love interest and Lily's sibling, is a bisexual, genderqueer person who is a target for intolerance in their small city of Kilbeg. An immersive tale of brave, vulnerable teens facing threats both real and fantastic. (Paranormal. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 The story of how I ended up with The Chokey Card Tarot Consultancy can be told in four detentions, three notes sent home, two bad report cards, and one Tuesday afternoon that ended with me locked in a cupboard. I'll give you the short version. Miss Harris gave me an in-school suspension after I threw a shoe at Mr. Bernard. It was payback for him calling me stupid for not knowing my Italian verbs. To this, I responded that Italian was a ridiculous language to learn anyway and that we should all be learning Spanish, because globally, more people speak Spanish. Mr. Bernard then said that if I really thought I could learn Spanish quicker than I was currently learning Italian, I was deluded. He turned back to the whiteboard. And then I threw my shoe. I didn't hit him. I'd like to stress that. I merely hit the board next to him. But no one seems to care about that except me. Maybe if I had a best friend--or really any close friend at all--I'd have someone to vouch for me. To tell them that it was a joke and that I would never knowingly hurt a teacher. Someone who could explain how it is with me: that sometimes frustration and rage surge through me, sparking out in ways I can't predict or control. But that friend doesn't exist, and I'm not sure I would deserve them if they did. In-school suspension starts on Tuesday morning, and Miss Harris meets me at her office and then leads me to the basement. In the four years I've been at St. Bernadette's, the sewage pipes have frozen and burst twice, not to mention the annual flood. As a result, the two tiny classrooms down here are covered in grass-green mold, and a damp, mildewy smell permeates everything. There's also no natural light, so one class period feels like an eternity. Teachers try to avoid scheduling classes down here as much as they can, so naturally the basement gets used a lot for detention, examinations, and storing extraneous junk that no one can be bothered to throw away. The nucleus of this is The Chokey, a long, deep cupboard that makes everyone think of the Trunchbull's torture room in Matilda . Miss Harris waves a dramatic arm at the cupboard. "Ta-da!" "You want me to clean out The Chokey?" I gasp. "That's inhumane." "More inhumane than throwing a shoe at someone, Maeve? Make sure to separate general waste from dry recyclables." "It didn't hit him," I protest. "You can't leave me here to clean this out. Not by myself. Miss, there might be a dead rat in there." She hands me a roll of black plastic bin bags. "Well, that would fall under 'general waste.' " And she leaves me there. Alone. In the creepy basement. It's impossible to know where to start. I pick at things, grumbling to myself that St. Bernadette's is like this. It's not like normal schools. It was a big Victorian town house for a very long time, until at some point during the 1960s, Sister Assumpta inherited it. Well. We say "Sister," but she's not really one. She was a novice, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music , and dropped out of the nunnery, and started a school for "well-bred girls." It probably seemed like a good idea when the number of "well-bred" girls in the city was about a dozen. But there are about four hundred of us now, all bursting out of this crumbling house, rotating between classes in drafty prefabs and converted old attic bedrooms. It's obscene how expensive it is to go to school here. I have to be careful about how much I complain in front of Mum and Dad. My four siblings didn't have to go here, after all. They were bright enough to make it through free schools unaided, without the "extra attention" I so clearly require. I can't even step into The Chokey at first because of all the broken old desks and chairs that are stacked up on top of each other. St. Bernadette's costs about two thousand euro a term, and wherever they spend that money, it's not on health and safety. A fresh waft of rot and dust hits my nose every time a piece of furniture comes free. I try to make a neat pile in the corner of the classroom, but when chair legs start coming loose in my hands, splintering my skin and smacking against my legs, it gets less orderly. I become angry and athletic about my tidying, throwing rubbish across the room like an Olympic javelin. It becomes cathartic after a while. I throw my school jumper off so I can move more easily. My tights start to run. Once all the furniture is cleared out, I'm amazed to see how much space there is in The Chokey. I always thought it was just a big cupboard, but it's clear it used to be some kind of kitchen pantry. Three or four girls could fit in here, no problem. It's good information to have; there's no such thing as too many hiding places. It needs a lightbulb or something, though. The door is so heavy that I have to prop it open with an old chair, and even then I'm working in near darkness. The furniture, however, is just the beginning. There are piles of papers, magazines, and old schoolbooks. I find exam papers from 1991, Bunty Annuals from the 1980s, and a couple of copies of something called Jackie magazine. I spend a while flipping through them, reading the problem pages and the weird illustrated soap operas that play out over ten panels. They're all ridiculously dated. The stories all have titles like "Millie's Big Catch!" and "A Date with Destiny!" I read "A Date with Destiny." It turns out Destiny is a horse. When I reach the back wall, things start getting really interesting. There are a couple of cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, thick, chalky dust covering each one. I pull the top one down, open it, and find three Sony Walkmans, a packet of Super King cigarettes, half a bottle of crusty peach schnapps, and a pack of playing cards. There's also a single hair clip with a little silver angel on it, looking very pure and holy next to the cigarettes and booze. I try it on briefly and then get worried about nits, so I throw it in a bin bag. Contraband. This must be where all the confiscated stuff ended up. Only one Walkman has a tape in it, so I stick the big headphones on and press play. Amazingly, it still works. The reels of the cassette start turning. Holy crap! A playful, plodding bass line thrums in my head. Dum-dum-dee-dum-de-dum . A woman's voice whispers to me, childlike and sweet. She starts singing about a man she knows with teeth as white as snow, which feels like a dumb line. What other color would she expect them to be? I listen, clipping the Walkman to my skirt. The case for the cassette is in the contraband box as well. I pop it open to see that it's a homemade mix. The only decoration is a white label that says SPRING 1990. I don't recognize most of the songs, but they all have a grungy, erratic, artsy edge to them. Songs where you can hear the bad eye shadow. I can't remember the last time I listened to something and didn't know exactly what it was. I'm not even sure I want to find out what these songs are. It's sort of cool not to know. I listen to the tape over and over as I continue clearing out The Chokey. There are about eleven songs in all, all by either very high-pitched men or very low-voiced women. I lift another heavy box, but this time the damp cardboard splits at the bottom, and everything in it comes crashing down on me, smacking me in the face full force. Something must hit the door, because the chair I was using to prop it open suddenly topples over, and The Chokey door slams shut. Excerpted from All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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