2022 book 62

 Claribel Ortega's Witchlings

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be the new Harry Potter, with a non-gross author. But this needed an editor with a harder hand. It’s about a little witch girl about to be sorted into her coven, but it turns out she’s a Spare, a coven-less witch treated as a second class citizen (this society makes zero sense), and she and her fellow Spares have to complete an impossible task to keep their magic or else they’ll be turned into toads. But like, nothing in this story is SUBTLE. All the plot beats are obvious, the villains are all mustache-twirling bad guys, even the friends we made along the way feels rote. There are some cool moments and characters (I was partial to the librarian and the super strong baby) but so much of this was just formulaic. Plus the word “smirk” is used about 87 times. :( I just don’t think middle grade books need so much hand-holding. B.