Totally Psychic by Brigid Martin

Totally Psychic by Brigid Martin
My Rating: ★★★★

I received a copy from Inkyard Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Paloma Ferrer comes from a long line of psychics. In fact, her grandma is a famous medium and their family can’t go anywhere without being recognized. Paloma loves the attention and can’t wait to follow in her grandma’s footsteps. The only problem is that her mom is determined that her children go on to live normal lives with nothing to do with their psychic abilities. What better way to escape following in their family’s footsteps than moving across the country? Paloma is furious, but she’s determined to help people and realizes she’s in over her head when she wants to impress her new friends and accidentally rips open a hole in the spirit portal.

I absolutely love this book. We follow Paloma, a 12-year-old girl who has recently come into her psychic abilities, as she’s forced to move across the country with her family. As a pre-teen, she’s faced with starting her entire social life over at a new school while her two best friends appear to have replaced her with a new friend already. Paloma is going through some typical feelings about the move, such as not understanding her parent’s choices and being irritated by Magdalena, her little sister, who always appears to be perfect in her parent’s presence.

I think there are some pretty good lessons in the book for young readers. For example, Paloma feels the pressure to impress her new friends or possibly find herself friendless at her new school, but her decisions lead to a supernatural mess. If your friends ditch you for not letting them crash over your boundaries, are they really your friends? That’s always a good lesson to learn, and I like that the book features it with a supernatural spin.

Another thing I love about this story is the family relationships. Paloma has a good relationship with her grandma that we get to see play out, but we also see her bond with her parents and her sister over time. While I do wish there was more time spent on Paloma and Magdalena’s sister bond, I do love what we did get. Overall, I think there did need to be more character development with her friends at the new school because they were very one dimensional. The ghosts we frequently saw had more depth than them, which I think was a little strange given how much we saw of the three new friends.

Otherwise, I think this is a great book that middle schoolers will enjoy. I’m looking forward to seeing what else Brigid comes out with because this was such a good story.