Caroline O’Donoghue’s very first YA novel is a paranormal fantasy centered around Maeve Chambers, a 16-year-old Irish teenager who finds a pack of old tarot cards at her school and suddenly discovers her gift for the tarot. However, things take a terrible turn for Maeve when her ex-best friend Lily goes missing after Maeve conducts a reading for her. As a fan of paranormal fantasy, I had been quite eager to pick All Our Hidden Gifts up, and I’m glad to say that the book didn’t disappoint!
Maeve Chambers is used to feeling small and insignificant; in her family of geniuses, she seems to be the only idiot, and she’s not exactly popular in school either. But when she finds out that tarot comes naturally to her, she finally feels like she has uncovered her calling. That is until she reads her ex-best friend Lily’s cards—despite Lily’s reluctance—and draws a card called The Housekeeper she knows nothing about. The outcome of the reading upsets Lily and the two get into an argument with Maeve ending up wishing that Lily would disappear. Scarily enough, Maeve’s wish comes true so she teams up with Lily’s brother Roe and her new friend Fiona, and vows to bring Lily back at any cost.
All Our Hidden Gifts is an easy read and it’s the kind of book you can fly through in one day. O’Donoghue’s writing is very simple and straightforward with the story moving quite fast. The witchy/magical elements in the book, especially the tarot cards, are explained effectively and without seeming info-dumpy, so that readers like me—who are not very familiar with the tarot—have no trouble following the story. Despite the plot being quite severe and tackling several intense issues, the book also managed to be weirdly funny at places, which certainly made it an entertaining ride.
The main characters within the book, aside from Maeve, are all quite loveable. Roe, who is fiercely earnest in everything he does, but is also soft and deeply vulnerable, is sure to win your heart. However, Maeve as a protagonist falls short next to the other characters like Fiona and Roe and even Lily, whom we get to see very little of. At times, Maeve is quite arrogant and self-centered, which makes it really hard to like her or connect to her. All Our Hidden Gifts also has a subplot about a cult-like religious group attacking queer people across the town, led by a man as powerful as Maeve; however, unfortunately it’s not handled as well as it could have been and ultimately feels rather half-baked.
O’Donoghue weaves in great diversity throughout her narrative, both in terms of the characters and the themes and issues discussed in the book. Among the primary characters, Fiona is Filipino, Roe is questioning his gender identity, Lily wears a hearing aid, and one of Maeve’s older sisters Jo is queer. One of the things I liked best about All Our Hidden Gifts is how Maeve, who is a cishet white person, is called out frequently by her friends whenever she makes thoughtless comments about the prejudicial treatment of people of colour or acts naïve when it comes to hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. At one point, Roe comments on how Lily doesn’t owe it to Maeve to forgive her after all the awful things Maeve did to her, and Fiona points out how Maeve makes the mistake of making others’ oppression all about herself.
Despite the few problems I had with the book, All Our Hidden Gifts is an engaging read that talks about gender identities and sexuality in an informative manner, and will definitely appeal to younger teens. If you like The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman, or All the Bad Apples by Moïra Fowley-Doyle, you’d probably want to check this one out!
All Our Hidden Gifts is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 8th 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card—and then disappears.
After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.
Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily’s gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.
