THE DRAMA WITH DOOMSDAYS

Celia, a middle school seer, has to save a classmate who has too much good luck.

Who wouldn’t want bountiful luck? But is it really the blessing it seems? While giving readers that conundrum to ponder, Reintgen sends his eighth grade clairvoyant, already in a whirl of sharply felt grief and fumbling new romance in the wake of events in The Problem With Prophecies (2022), a new flurry of ominous visions centered around a suddenly astounding, magnetic, dazzling basketball phenom named Patrick. He’s been eating lucky cookies, it turns out—so many that the spell has become strong enough to siphon good luck from those around him…and if left unchecked, it will not only leave a growing circle of people luckless for the rest of their lives, but victimize Patrick too, since he’ll never know for sure whether anything he gets or does is due to his own capabilities. How, though, to break a spell that can by its very nature make any effort to counter it go wrong? Fortunately, Celia has the example of her wise, much-missed Grammy to draw on as well as loyal allies, both among her racially diverse, nonmagical schoolmates and the variously gifted members (all women, the men being still conspicuously absent) of the White Cleary clan, to help her get to and through a wildly revved up climax.

A knotty, high-stakes premise leading to an ingenious solution, with snogging and spellcasting on the way.