Book Descriptions
for All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
After finding an old pack of Tarot cards, Maeve Chambers, who is white, discovers she has an affinity for readings; remembering what the cards symbolize is easier than any schoolwork, and Maeve’s good at intuiting people, too. Classmate Fiona, her first customer, soon becomes a friend, something Maeve is short on since dumping former best friend Lily. But one strange card, The Housekeeper, doesn’t seem to belong in the pack. Maeve removes it, but it shows up later in a reading she does for Lily after being egged on by classmates; afterward, Lily disappears in the middle the night. Maeve is not only frightened for Lily, she’s worried Lily’s sibling, Roe, a bisexual, gender nonconforming musician with whom she’d been getting close, will find out how mean she was to their sister the year before. Meanwhile, a group in town called the Children of Brigid, with a charismatic and manipulative leader in handsome Aaron, is encouraging young followers to protest “the sin of homosexuality.” It turns out Aaron, like Maeve, is a sensitive, but his is a negative energy somehow connected to The Housekeeper. With Roe and Fiona’s help, Maeve is determined to figure things out, bring Lily back, and rid her city of the Aaron and the Children of Brigid. The melding of magic and the occult with societal issues is brilliantly executed in this captivating novel with its complicated characters and a smart, sometime snarky teen voice. (Age 12 and older)
CCBC Choices 2022. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2022. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card—and then disappears.
After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.
Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily's gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.
After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.
Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily's gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.