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Mister Magic (Kiersten White)
May. 16th, 2024 07:00 pmThis book is about a nostalgic kid's TV show that... somehow... everyone remembers watching as a kid... but no one can actually find any information about it online or anywhere. (One of my favorite parts of the book are the found documents that sometimes arise after chapter breaks: a blog post or a wikipedia post or even once the notes of a fanfic!) The six kids who were featured on the show, now grown-ups, are having a "cast reunion."
The POV character, Val, finds out that she was one of the six kids, but she doesn't remember anything about it. Doesn't remember being on the show, doesn't remember what it was like, barely remembers the other kids -- only remembers a vast sense of guilt and shame, and knows that her dad hid both of them away for decades, but she doesn't remember why.
About midway through the book, the clue dropped for me. The clue was one of the grown-up kids, Jenny, saying, "This is the way to live, you know? In the world, not of the world." ( Thematic meanderings, no explicit spoilers. )
Something I really liked about the ending is that it's been a long-standing complaint of mine that while it's a reasonably common trope of a main character ascending to become the wise mentor figure, that character is almost always male, ugh. Not this time, yeah!
(I also thought the fakeout, where Isaac becomes Mister Magic, was well done -- I was all "okay..." which quickly became "wait, what?" and "but...!")
It's a very fast and almost breezy read in style (if not not in content) -- it reads like YA, though the concerns of the characters, who are all grown-ups now, are adult.
The POV character, Val, finds out that she was one of the six kids, but she doesn't remember anything about it. Doesn't remember being on the show, doesn't remember what it was like, barely remembers the other kids -- only remembers a vast sense of guilt and shame, and knows that her dad hid both of them away for decades, but she doesn't remember why.
About midway through the book, the clue dropped for me. The clue was one of the grown-up kids, Jenny, saying, "This is the way to live, you know? In the world, not of the world." ( Thematic meanderings, no explicit spoilers. )
Spoilers for the end
Something I really liked about the ending is that it's been a long-standing complaint of mine that while it's a reasonably common trope of a main character ascending to become the wise mentor figure, that character is almost always male, ugh. Not this time, yeah!
(I also thought the fakeout, where Isaac becomes Mister Magic, was well done -- I was all "okay..." which quickly became "wait, what?" and "but...!")
It's a very fast and almost breezy read in style (if not not in content) -- it reads like YA, though the concerns of the characters, who are all grown-ups now, are adult.
