ARC Review: Some Kind Of Magic

Some Kind Of Magic by Adrian Fogelin

Publisher: Peachtree Publishers, 2015
232 pages, kindle edition
Source: Netgalley
Release Date: April 1st 2015 
Genre: Young Adult
Links: Goodreads | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
It's the summer before high school starts for Cass, Jemmie, Ben, and Justin, the neighborhood kids readers met in Crossing Jordan. Ben worries the break will be routine, until his little brother Cody finds a hat left by their missing uncle. The hat leads them to a lost house in the woods. They don't suspect the house with a tragic past might nudge them toward the future.

My Review:
This book Some Kind of Magic is something very special. Following a group of children the summer before they head to high school, they discover an abandoned house in the middle of an out of bounds area thanks to a magic hat.

The story is written beautifully and really draws you in. Little Cody just wants to be part of his big brother’s group of friends and when he discovers his missing uncle’s hat at the back of a closet, he transforms into Detective Dobbs (someone the group of kids listen to).With his new power so you could say, Cody leads his brother and all his friends to an abandoned forest area, following the hat’s instructions. In this area they find an abandoned house with a dreadful past.

We were taken on a journey along with the children as they delve into the houses past and uncover the truth that links the house to their family; all the hidden secrets coming to light. There is a great mystery to this story and the revelation at the end was very entirely unexpected, and revealed amazingly.

This book told a beautiful tale that young adult readers will enjoy. With the strong bonds of friends and lots of amazing bravery, the characters find a way into your hearts. This is definitely a book I would read again and again.


My Rating:

Author Bio:

When I was twelve I needed money. Money for what? Movie tickets, Beatles' records, cute shoes. But there was only one way a twelve-year-old girl in Princeton Junction, New Jersey could earn that kind of money. Babysitting.
Unfortunately, there were lots of cash-hungry twelve-year-old girls in my neighborhood and hardly any little kids. To beat out the competition each girl had an angle. One let the kids stay up late, another let them eat junk, a third let them watch whatever they wanted on TV.

Me? I told really scary stories. I knew how because I had practiced on my sister, telling her ghost stories in our pitch-dark room. Her favorite was one I learned from my mom. It was called “The Man With the Golden Arm.” After I had told it a gazillion times I began to change the body part. “The Man With the Golden Nose.” “The Man With the Golden Butt.” You get the idea.

But as a babysitter I needed more stories. Lots more stories. I started making them up.

Along one side of our neighborhood ran a skinny stream called Canoe Brook. At it’s widest, it was no more than three feet, but in my stories Canoe Brook became a dismal swamp inhabited by a ghost named Wilhelmina Willendorf. Poor Wilhelmina wasn’t a bad ghost. She just missed her kids who had drowned in the swamp. As a ghost, she was still looking for them, and when she couldn’t find them she came after the kids in the neighborhood (the kids I was babysitting), dragging them into the swamp to keep her company.

Sometimes I scared the kids so badly I was sure I would never work again—but then the phone would ring. “Can you baby sit tonight? Daniel wants you because you’re so scary!”

And that’s how I became a storyteller—and bought lots of cute shoes.

Author Links: Website