Flower Moon

Linko, Gina. Flower Moon
January 2nd 2018 by Sky Pony Press
ARC provided by the publisher

Identical Twins Tempest and Tally Jo are approaching their 13th birthday, but are increasingly at odds with each other. Tempest is a bit socially awkward and loves showing off her science experiments at school, which embarrasses Tally, who also misses the fact that the two used to always hang out together. Their parents decide to send them off to their grandfather's carnival for the summer, so the two end up in Georgia with Pa Charlie. While there, Tally starts to realize that the twins in her family seem to be doomed to spend their lives apart from each other, the way that their grandmother and her twin would only mail craft projects back and forth, and their mother and Aunt Grania have not been together since they were 18. Tally can feel that things are different, and that forces are literally forcing her and her beloved sister apart. Can she work with the people in the carnival who know and love her and try to figure out a solution before the convergence of the Flower Moon and their 13th birthday splits the twins apart forever?
Strengths: This has a lot of good sister drama with a background of magical realism that will be appreciated by fans of Lloyd's The Key to Extraordinary, Law's Savvy, and Downing's Moon Shadow. The plot moves along at a brisk pace, and there is an undercurrent of time sensitive mystery that makes this hard to put down.
Weaknesses: I'm never a huge fan of quirky Southern characters, and when the carnival was added, this got too creepy for me. It's not a creepy book, but it made me feel creeped out.
What I really think: My readers don't care much for Lloyd and Law; I may purchase this if there's enough money at the end of the year. It was well written and an interesting debut, but I'm just not sure if it will find readers in my library.