Clara Voyant by Rachelle Delaney

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Clara can’t believe her no-nonsense grandmother has just up and moved to Florida, leaving Clara and her mother on their own for the first time. This means her mother can finally “follow her bliss,” which involves moving to a tiny apartment in Kensington Market, working at a herbal remedy shop and trying to develop her so-called mystical powers. Clara tries to make the best of a bad situation by joining the newspaper staff at her new middle school, where she can sharpen her investigative journalistic skills and tell the kind of hard-news stories her grandmother appreciated. But the editor relegates her to boring news stories and worse . . . the horoscopes.

Worse yet, her horoscopes come true, and soon everyone at school is talking about Clara Voyant, the talented fortune-teller. Clara is horrified–horoscopes and clairvoyance aren’t real, she insists, just like her grandmother always told her. But when a mystery unfolds at school, she finds herself in a strange situation: having an opportunity to prove herself as an investigative journalist . . . with the help of her own mystical powers.

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Recommended by the great and power Rendz @ Reading With Rendz

This was adorable and fun and quirky and I was in deep with this one. MG is killing it, and this is just the latest edition of Middle Grade showing its fine writing skills.

This book is really light and fluffy and quirky. It has an intriguing premise of a girl who is determined to write a hard hitting piece of junior high journalism but somehow gets stuck with writing the horoscope -to her horror and to the delight of her hippy mother and her morbid new friends. When her horoscopes start coming true, Clara has to start confronting what she thought she knew and who she might be. I loved how all of the storylines came together with Clara’s new talent, her desire to be something more, and the mystery of who stole the school mascot. All of them were intriguing, and each provided a cool, fascinating dynamic to the story.

I thought the characters really shone for this novel, too. The cast is full of quirky, eccentric characters, and I loved each new addition that popped out. Clara was a wonderful narrator, and I loved going on her journey. You could feel her desire to do more and be more, and I totally felt her joys and pains so easily through the pages. I loved her best friend, too, and each time she mentioned her and her dad’s obsession with morbid crime shows, she won my hard even more. Clara’s mom and her kooky haunted realtor friends were a lot of fun, too.

Tiana would like her horoscope to say “All good baking, all the time!”

The writing was quite good too. It was easy and breezy, and it was…hang on, I’ll let you guess…fun. It had a whimsical feel, and I could never quite pinpoint if this was going to be straight up contemporary or magical realism. Delaney created a super cool vibe, and I totally loved the setting. She did a really cool job of making it feel like a bit of magic in the marketplace where Clara lived. I could pictured a lot of it super clearly.

Overall, this was a lot of fun. There was something just missing to make this a favorite, but it really was such a great read. It wasn’t quite spooky spooky for my readathon, but it was full of quirky, eccentric characters that had me in love with intriguing and fascinating storylines that merged together perfectly. Yet another MG book that is totally killing it. 5 crowns and a Tiana rating!

What do you think? Do you like quirky, eccentric characters? What was the last book you really enjoyed? Are you loving MG lately as much as I am?Let’s discuss in the comments below!