Well,this time I had time to read a little of the book to do first impressions. It is about three girls Ariel Niki and Margaret . It keeps on referring to some sort of ritual, I guess I will have to find out later. So far it is very suspenseful and good. Happy reading everyone!
I have now finished the book, here is the plot summary. But first, an explanation about the ritual. Apparently, the three girls found this old book of magic in a thrift store. The ritual was a ritual for change, and they had to go somewhere and bury these "objects" and think of what change they wanted to occur. Now for the plot summary. Once again, Margaret gets a pig for her birthday (it started a long time ago, and now she hates pigs). But now she is going into middle school and does not want to be known for pigs. Everything starts out fine, and the ritual appears to be working. But then weird things start happening. Margaret had wished for James, a boy she had a crush on, to notice her. But he starts noticing her, as pig girl, not what she wanted. Niki, one of her friends, had a brother with down syndrome, and she had wished for him to go away, meaning for him to go away to sort of special needs home so her mom could have more time. But instead, he starts going away as in dying, because his heart turns out to be bad. Ariel wished to become a proffesional chef. And she is on her way, because she won a cooking contest and now has a scholarship to a cooking college (or something like that). But the recipie she entered was from a cooking show, with only the flour altered, and now she is afraid she'll get in big trouble, or be sued. So they all decide to reverse the spell. They go to a forest near a bay where they burried the objects and mark the spot where they burried them so they can come back after they have a sign that tommorow is they night they should reverse the magic. But then their next door neighbor dies of stroke, maragret's mom is revealed to be an agoraphobic and is now on some sort of anti-agoraphobic drugs, and Niki's little brother is in the hospital. Ariel and Niki both agree those are signs not to do they ritual but margaret doesn't agree. They all have a fight and kind of stop being friends. Margaret goes out to reverse the magic herself but gets delayed so much that she gives up and goes home. Then when they all meet and make up, they begin to believe that even undoing the ritual won't stop all of this and stop believing in magic. Ariel refuses the scholarship and fixes her problem, Maragret smashes all her pigs, and I forget what Niki does. Maragret's aunt discovers the pig massacre and when M tells her that they didn't have any real memories to go with them, she says they did, and then M agrees. Niki's brother is now better, but not perfect. And so is M's mom. Then in the epilogue M digs up her object, her very first pig, sells the magic book and buys one last pig.
What I liked, it kept the theme hidden until the end. Can anyone guess the theme, all right, here it is: Be careful what you wish for! It was also a very cleverly done coming of age story, middle school and all that. But what I didn't like is how it did not explain how the unstoppable destructive power of the ritual was averted and everyone lived happily ever after. I suppose it has to do with "Pig Magic" which probably isn't really magic but some sort of pseudo magic type thing which I still do not understand. But other than that it was a good book.
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