April 22, 2025 by Simon & Schuster BFYR
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Raveena is mourning the loss of her Grandmama as well as dealing with the fact that the entire arts program at her school has been cut due to budget issues. This affects Mrs. Yoon, the music teacher, whose husband runs Yoon’s Antiques, a store Raveena and her mother frequent. While at the store, Raveena picks up an old pink, corded phone, and finds that after delivering a bit of a shock to her and her friends, allows them to speak to the dead. The first person who contacts them is Mateo’s grandmother, a feisty spirit on roller skates. After this, the group, which includes Aiko, Lillian, and Blair, seeks advice from Paola’s Predictions and finds that they are mediums. They get customers, like Wisteria, Dahlia, and Iris Jones, who are also mediums but can’t contact their own loved ones, and who want the Spirit Service to contact “our boy” who passed… who turns out to be a Labrador retriever. As the Hollow’s Day Festival quickly approaches, the girls work to solve a community mystery involving Raveena’s Grandmama and the town, which was founded in 1925 near Toronto by immigrants from New Orleans who had mystical powers. When the school principal and many of the teachers are possessed, can the Spirit Service save the day?
This reminded me a little of Meriano’s Love. Sugar. Magic. series, the Mowery’s Twintuition, or other books where tweens have more realistic magical powers that can save the day. Missing the grandmother echoes the sentiments in Grant’s 2023 A Green Velvet Secret.
April 22, 2025 by Aladdin
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Lainey Philipps is orphaned after her parents die in a motorcar accident, and she ends up at the Sycamore Home for Orphaned Children, run by the Holsapples. In the grand tradition of Victorian and Edwardian era orphanages, they exploit the children and conditions are terrible. When Lainey gets an offer from Lady Blunt to attend Lovelace Academy, it seems better than the alternative. She meets Sabrina, and is glad that the school has warm rooms, clean clothes, and actual learning. Sabrina tells her a bit about the Lovelace Society (the book begins with the death of Ada Lovelace), Lainey is all too eager to travel to Bern, Switzerland to help out Mileva Einstein. This doesn’t start well, since Mileva thinks that Lainey is an over privileged young lady, but the lady scientist eventually accepts her help. Lainey works with Gen and other street children, but eventually ends up back at the Academy, ready for her next adventure.
Readers who love this historical time period and harbor secret desires to become spies or scientists will enjoy this girl empowering adventure. Read alikes include Stratford’s The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Springer’s Enola Holmes mysteries, Wood’s The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Primavera’s Ms. Rapscott's Girls and Carlson’s The World's Greatest Detective. One of my favorites is the darker, more Young Adult series by Ying S. Lee, The Agency: A Spy in the House.
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