FRACTURED PATH

In 1965 San Francisco, high school senior Blake Estancia is plagued by cryptic visions.

Magic runs in Blake’s family, but it has barely manifested in her. Unlike her telekinetic maternal grandmother, Zora, introduced in Dhonielle Clayton’s Shattered Midnight (2022), or her healer abuela, the teen’s power is relatively unimpressive: She receives abstract impressions when touching an object. Resigned to this, Blake focuses on becoming a professional artist, but it’s not easy for a young woman to break into the male-dominated art world. When startling visions begin appearing—first in her dreams and then in her waking hours—Blake turns to the aunt and uncle who raised her after her parents’ deaths for answers. She learns the truth about a family curse and a lost magic heirloom: her grandfather Phillip’s mirror. Blaming the curse for the many tragedies in her family’s history, Blake decides to break it by following the clues in her visions to find the mirror. She’s accompanied by her best friend, Olivia, and a British boy named Ian whose immediate connection with Blake seems fated. The book’s inherent suspense and initial forward motion are stalled by Blake’s unfamiliarity with her family history. When she begins her investigation into the curse, she finds fragments of answers, random breadcrumbs lacking in context that lead to a sudden and not quite conclusive ending. Blake’s mother was biracial (Black and White), and her father was Mexican.

A meandering story lacking momentum.