The Sweetest Kind of Fate

January 1, 2018

Gr 7 Up-Amber Sand is a matchmaker and is used to being considered worthless by the magical world and its creatures. So she is shocked when mean girl and siren, Ivy, shows up on her doorstep asking for help. Ivy is desperate to break up her sister's relationship with a mermaid and wants Amber's help to prove they aren't a match. Amber agrees to help Ivy's much kinder sister, Iris. When Amber looks into Iris's eyes, she knows that Brooke the mermaid is her perfect match. But when Iris decides to become a mermaid, things take a dangerous turn, leaving Ivy and Amber reluctantly working together. While they do what they can to help, Amber is also struggling with knowing that her boyfriend, Charlie, is destined for someone else. To make matters worse, Charlie's match is her sweet new friend Kim. Amber's jealousy over their seemingly happy future together causes her to lash out and threaten all her relationships. There is a jumble of plot threads in this sequel to The Best Kind of Magic, but it is a fun read. The quick resolution after so much buildup is underwhelming but doesn't detract from the overall story. The ending is satisfactory, but will leave readers wanting more. This installment is lighter on mystery but tackles real-life issues that will resonate with teens. VERDICT A good purchase for libraries, especially where the previous volume is popular.-Faythe Arredondo, Tulare County Library, CA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2017
The story of Amber Sand, matchmaker extraordinaire, continues after The Best Kind of Magic (2017).There's a lot going on in Amber's life: her part-time jobs at a bakery, a restaurant for supernatural creatures, and her mother's magic shop, on top of her senior course load and working on her application to the Chicago Culinary Institute, and making time for her friends Amani Sharma and Kim Li and boyfriend, Charlie Blitzman. But things get more complicated when her nemesis, Ivy Chamberlain, comes to Amber for help in persuading Ivy's sister, Iris, not to become a mermaid in order to marry her girlfriend. It seems Iris has gone for help to Victoria, an evil witch who used to be Amber's mother's best friend. Worst of all, Amber keeps getting glimpses of Charlie's true love--and it's Kim. Will she give in to fate? Will her mother defeat Victoria? Will she get through this after blowing up all of her relationships? Most of these multiple storylines find shallow and lackluster conclusions. Both Sand women suffer from immaturity--Amber in digging into her mother's past and Amber's mother with her stubborn secrecy. Besides her immaturity, Amber's misanthropic tendencies make her moments of altruism feel forced. Racial and ethnic diversity is cued with naming conventions; the book otherwise largely adheres to the white default.A sequel with even less magic--literal and figurative--than its predecessor. (Paranormal romance. 12-16)

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