THE MIDNIGHT ORCHESTRA

Amelia Jones isn’t a typical seventh grader.

She attends a boarding school dedicated to the mastery of Musicraft, a type of magic conjured by playing musical instruments. On top of that, she’s the only student with the ability to Compose, that is, create new spells, an unusual skill she has recently discovered. This sequel to 2020’s The Mystwick School of Musicraft picks up just a week after the harrowing events of the previous novel. Now, the interscholastic Orphean Trials are fast approaching, and default White Amelia joins the team along with her best friend, Jai Kapoor, who is cued as South Asian, and new pal Darby Bradshaw, who has some Japanese heritage. Amelia must use her fledgling Composer abilities to write an original spell and lead the Mystwick team to victory. The pressure to compose a masterpiece for the competition mounts, and Amelia doubts that she has what it takes to write a winning spell. Meanwhile, strange invitations to something called the Midnight Orchestra begin to appear in unexpected places, which soon leads Amelia and her friends into the shadowy web of a mysterious composer who is seeking black spells. Amelia will need to draw on all her strength to save her classmates from this malevolence. Vividly descriptive language and characters readers will root for make this a strong second installment.

A well-orchestrated fantasy that will have readers asking for an encore.