This book is a great mix of creepy, clever, and mystery. I like Ebony for her attitude that makes her endearing and also seems to keep getting her in trouble. And Fleishman is her patient, level-headed friend. He was my favorite character, I think. What I liked amidst all the supernatural activity is that Ebony and Fleishman felt like typical kids. The further I got into the book, the more invested I became. I won't give away any spoilers. I will say that the end worked well, but seemed to leave an opening for a sequel or a series. Let's hope!

In this lively middle-grade fantasy, Ebony Charmed thinks she is defective, and that all the other kids at her special middle school for mages have great powers but her.

Yet she is able to speak by sign language to some spirits in the local graveyard, and weird things keep happening to her. She thinks she’s at fault, especially as her parents have separated.

The only person who listens to her is her best bud Fleishman, but he doesn’t believe in magic. Until magic sweeps them both into a succession of scary situations.

The first half had a lot of promise, but was frustrating because the adults in Ebony’s life wouldn’t tell her what was going on for her own good, meanwhile she never did what she was told, so she kept running into more and more danger.

The magical forces around her wouldn’t answer her questions either, just repeated that she would know what to do when the time came. This made for frustrating reading, and it didn’t help that the book was rife with spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, or that there was a lot of bigotry about fat people in the handling of the Headmistress, called Bat-Face by the kids.

In spite of all the language errors, the second half picked up in pacing, becoming one long action sequence. It didn’t always make sense, but it was full of scary figures and imaginative magic as Ebony meets famous figures from Norse mythology.

Altogether a fun read for kids; I suspect that middle-grade readers would go right along with Ebony being constantly told to behave, and to wait, and she’d understand later, and the adults making little sense. Middle grade life can sometimes seem like that in the real world.

The book comes to a partial resolution, leaving plenty of threads dangling for further adventures.

Copy courtesy of NetGalley

I'd hoped I would like this book since there was Norse mythology in it but... Nope, not at all. All the time reading it I tried getting into the story but I just couldn't. I didn't care about the characters, it felt really like a typical story you've read again and again. There wasn't any kind of surprise or twist and I wish I could have liked this book because it really seemed interesting but I was bored the entire book.

Ebony Charmed seems to have less-than-average abilities at Motley Junior High: School for the Psychically and Celestially Gifted. All of her projects seem to go awry. Her mom and dad are fighting. Life in sixth grade is tough. Good thing she has Fleishman, her GTG (go-to-guy) to keep her in a good mood, as well as three spirit friends that she communicates with in sign language. When one of her school projects goes missing, Ebony has to learn to trust in herself and her abilities to save her project, and, quite possibly, the world.

I love the way Larsen did her world-building here. I feel like I might need to visit Peru, Maine (an actual town) to see if I can spot things mentioned in the book! The pages kept turning as I wanted to see what was next for our heroine. I love all the attention Norse mythology is getting lately and hope to continue to learn more about it!