All Our Hidden Gifts

Description

A dark and supernatural contemporary teen debut by multi-talented author and journalist Caroline O'Donoghue. "So gripping, so intriguing, so layered - All Our Hidden Gifts feels like a book that should have always existed." Kiran Millwood Hargrave "A seductive and brilliant book. Fiercely, furiously good." Melinda Salisbury "The most authentic teenage voice I've read in ages... I was utterly bewitched." Holly Bourne "Grim, gripping and gorgeous. I devoured it." Deirdre Sullivan Maeve Chambers doesn't have much going for her. Not only does she feel like the sole idiot in a family of geniuses, she managed to drive away her best friend Lily a year ago. But when she finds a pack of dusty old tarot cards at school, and begins to give scarily accurate readings to the girls in her class, she realizes she's found her gift at last. Things are looking up - until she discovers a strange card in the deck that definitely shouldn't be there. And two days after she convinces her ex-best friend to have a reading, Lily disappears. Can Maeve, her new friend Fiona and Lily's brother Roe find her? And will Maeve's new gift be enough to bring Lily back, before she's gone for good?

Caroline O'Donoghue is a journalist and author. She has published two adult novels, Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature, and is currently working on a collection of personal essays exploring her experiences of feminism and witchcraft. She has a regular column in The Irish Examiner, and has written for The Irish Independent, Glamour, Buzzfeed and Vice, among others. Caroline also hosts Sentimental Garbage, a podcast in which she reviews commercial women's fiction titles with other authors. All Our Hidden Gifts is her first novel for young adults. Visit Caroline on Twitter: @Czaroline

A supernatural mystery plays out against the backdrop of contemporary Ireland, exploring the theme of acceptance without ever being heavy-handed. O'Donoghue has a keen eye for the complexities of friendships; I predict this one will be catnip to teenage readers. * The Observer * From the author of Scenes of a Graphic Nature, this genuinely creepy novel is veined with mordant comedy and dreamy romance. * The Guardian * Fabulous, richly imagined YA, full of folklore and romance: delicious. * Katherine Rundell * overall this is a satisfying, entertaining read - with a well-deserved sequel due next year * SFX * Thankfully, All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline manages to present a non-binary character with subtlety and warmth. Perhaps it works so well because, being an occult-tinged mystery-romance steeped in Irish folklore, there's a lot else going on. [...] O'Donoghue's intriguing story takes in myth, history, tensions between Catholic and Protestant, and race in Ireland. Helping the repentant Maeve search for the missing girl is Lily's nail-polish wearing brother Roe, formerly Rory, who is the essence of fluidity in a novel that's all about the power of liminal spaces. * The Financial Times *