In A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic by Lisa Papademetriou, we meet two girls, Lisa and Kai.
The two girls have nothing in common, except that they’re both going somewhere far away from home for summer. For Lisa, it’s Pakistan. And for Kai, it’s Texas. Kai knows she isn’t going to have fun, and Pakistan isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be for Lisa.
Nothing seems to be going well until the girls find a copy of the same book from across the world. Simply entitled The Exquisite Corpse, the book appears to be completely blank. But when Kai or Lisa writes something in the book, the writing appears in each other’s copy. Along with writing neither one of them did.
The more they write, the more story appears, telling the misadventures of Ralph T. Flabbergast and a blue butterfly. But it’s all a story, right? None of the mysterious writing that keeps appearing could be real, could it?
My Thoughts A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic has an interesting idea to share, for sure. But it’s one of those books that no one’s ever heard of; you find wedged in the back of your elementary school library that they ordered from one of those Scholastic book order pamphlets years ago. With those kinds of books, it’s either a hit or miss.
I don’t think the magic in this book is highly unusual, more like 'mildly believable.' I found myself skipping chapters because I thought they were so boring. Lisa’s chapters are waaay slower then Kai’s, and Kai’s are super boring to begin with. I think the ending was cool though. Did things the girls wrote affect time? Or did things actually happen that way? I dunno.
I don’t think Unusual Magic interested me that much. If I had to give it an honest rating, I think it would be a 4.5 out of 10.
Go read it if you want, but I don’t think it’s worth your time.
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