A review by healingtothemax
The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay

3.0

Featured read of OwlCrate Jr's middle-grade focused monthly book box, the "Lost in a Book" theme. My first by author McKay, thankfully a stand-alone, apparently a departure from her usual genre. Contemporary setting grounds a blended family whose kids (5, 12, 16) face a new home oddly magicked, absent parents, and deep emotions while being beset by "green magic"-a very feral type of magic, unexplained yet acceptable because its book-powered. Unsettling, this book pelts you with ivy-shaped scenes, mysteriously shaped by beautiful prose, connected along hidden plot arcs. Its target audience is rather murky, a rare misstep for Owlcrate Jr. The story's point-of-views shift between sections, disappearing the original bookloving diverse MC beneath an anxiety-beset younger stepbrother and a first-love besotted older stepbrother. The outcome is uncertain since there are genuinely creepy frightening scenes for younger readers. However McKay pulls off a stunningly poignant and satisfying conclusion, elevating this book into the shelf realm of "it didn't work completely for me, yet there's something uniquely magical about it, here you try it."