AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! The very happiest of book birthdays today to my longtime CP/beta reader and friend, @devafagan , and her incredible MG novel, RIVAL MAGIC!!!!!!! Let me tell you some of the things I love about this book! https://bookshop.org/books/rival-magic-9781534439054/9781534439054

It's FULL of strong, smart girls & women, with all different kinds of strength. Nearly all of the major characters just quietly happen to be female.

The core relationship between two young magic apprentices—one who has lots of knowledge & understanding of magic and is very clever in its application, and the other who has prodigous raw magical power—is fantastic!

The magic system is a lot of fun! It uses a limited vocabulary of magical words, so it's like if you were struggling with your first year of a foreign language trying to communicate WITH MAGIC that will take you all too literally.

There's tons of adventure, just the right amount of silliness and hijinks, and some creepiness to balance it out. Everything moves along at a rollicking clip—kids will definitely not get bored, here.

And it happens to have very possibly my favorite sea monster of all time. As well as lots of other fun worldbuilding details that really give it that special middle grade touch of magic!

Highly recommended for the kid in your life...or the adult MG reader!

Last but not least, Deva is a wonderful person, and it has been incredibly inspiring following her writing career from when we were unpublished writers in a critique group together. Here's her really great thread on this latest step in her writing journey: https://twitter.com/devafagan/status/1252567275846205440