THE SUMMER OF THE FORTUNE TELLERS

Millie, Nora, and Bea, with help from their magical fortune tellers, have patched up their friendship and are looking forward to a summer adventure together.

In 2024’s Fortune Tellers, a misunderstanding, the pandemic, and family moves separated the longtime friends—until mysterious messages in fortune tellers they’d created years ago led them to reconcile. Now, after Millie invites them to her house on a lake in the Berkshires, the rising eighth graders, who are cued white, are excited—and a little anxious—about being together nonstop for a month. In alternating chapters, each girl reveals her innermost thoughts. During their vacation, the friends will also be running their own little summer camp for 8-year-old triplets. After some discussion about whether to share their special secret, they introduce their charges to the joys of folding paper fortune tellers and writing on them with the magical Write Your Destiny markers. Once again, the fortune tellers start delivering messages the girls need to hear, not necessarily the words they wrote, helping them navigate interpersonal conflict, crushes, and family issues. When they decide to protest some proposed commercial development of the area, the fortune teller messages encourage them. Greenwald expertly describes the emotions behind the girls’ experiences as well as the commitment that leads them to pledge to be open about their feelings with each other, and Millie’s and Nora’s Jewish identities are woven into the story.

A feel-good tween drama packed with positive life lessons.