I'm always on the look out for middle-grade books with Cuban representation, and this one has magic too!
This just missed the cut off to be added to Bookish classes this year- I may still sneak it somehow- it's that good!

This book made me smile. I loved Paloma. Her character is so strong it just jumps out of the pages at you. Her longing to prove herself to her grandmother is such an enduring storyline. It is hard when you move away from the only family you have known. While I respect her mother for wanting to escape to somewhere where they are not as recognized, it would be a hard move on anyone who is so close with their family. I also really liked that the new friends that Paloma made really wanted to be her friends, they didn’t have any nefarious plots to use Paloma’s powers for themselves. This is a fabulous book, and I can’t wait to recommend it.
Thank you so much to Inkyard Press and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy.

Quick read and kept my attention. I think middle schoolers would enjoy it. Some parts were very repetitive.

This is a fantastic middle-age novel about a young girl discovering herself, including some interesting supernatural powers. I'll be purchasing a hard copy to keep in my classroom.

Thank you, Inkyard Press, for the free ebook galley to review.

This is such a fun Latinx and paranormal novel! It's middle grade, but as an adult I enjoyed it immensely. It's full of colorful details, especially about anything related to mediumship. Paloma's extended family is fascinating--the book describes the various psychic powers specific family members have. Her abuela is the best.

Paloma started her mediumship powers a month ago--during the summer. The extended family lives with Paloma's grandmother in a big house, but her immediate family is about to move across the country. When the book begins, they haven't moved yet, and Paloma doesn't want such a drastic change--she'll miss her friends and her abuela.

The book not only has great plot twists and conflict. It also has great details. Speaking of detail, I love the statues of famous mediums and astrologers!

As terrible as the move from Miami to California initially seems, Paloma meets wonderful ghosts at her new home. After using her powers to help numerous people, Paloma remembers what's truly important about being a medium.

I appreciate the diversity--you can tell from characters' names that they're different ethnicities. Sometimes a character's skin tone is mentioned. It's all low key. I also appreciate the animal ghosts.

My only complaint is that the book perpetuates the myth of bonding with siblings no matter how bad they are. The less people bond with their bullies, the better. Plus I want a demon to eat her little sister, but that probably doesn't belong in a kid's book.

This is a delightful and humorous middle grade novel that feels like the beginning of a wonderful series.

Just not for me. The plot felt rushed in about six different directions and the MC was pretty unlikable (to be fair, I didn't particularly like any of the characters). Others may feel differently, this one was just a big no on my personal list

This is a really cute one that took me longer to get into than usual. The writing style is in first person and it makes for an awkward reading due to Paloma sounding more like an adult imitating a tween. The dialogue was very simple and often times felt like reading prepared statements rather than actual back and forth. So on the whole the kids didn't feel like kids, more like if an adult wrote a play about what kids would say, very after school special style. Weirdly enough, the adult ghosts talked and acted more like kids.

The story was nice and light, no super high stakes which is actually kind of refreshing for a kid's book. I wish we had seen more of Paloma's flower powers, it was a really interesting way to show divination and felt very natural to the character and the world.

Most of the obstacles were easy to overcome, which wasn't bad exactly, just made for a very one note emotional journey. There's definitely nothing harmful about the book, it just reads very much like a green debut. There won't be much to challenge the reader and the world building has potential to be engaging with the different psychic styles, but we never dig deep into and they come off as feeling ornamental.

Definitely some potential here and I'm interested to see what more the author has for us!

This book would be great for young adult readers. This is a positive book of self discovery that young adults would eat up. I love that it has the cautionary tale of listening to your elders and being responsible with your decisions. This was a beautiful story!

Thank you to NetGalley for granting this ARC, and fast read. The plot was interesting and the story was cute.

DNF’d at 36%

I really liked the premise of this book, and think the writing is good for that 10-13 age demographic. The reason I’m not able to complete it is because the parents’ interactions with Paloma up until this point are very emotionally immature, to the point of being triggering for me to read. The only interaction she has with her parents are her mom being angry or upset with her, misattributing pranks from her little sister and literally saying that the little sister is perfect and wouldn’t do something like that. I can see Paloma trying to hard to connect with her mom, to be part of the flower shop, but her mom really doesn’t seem interested in her. You could say all of this is because we’re reading through the eyes of a 12 year old so she’s an unreliable narrator, and this is her interpretation of her experiences, we’re only being shown the bad parts, but I think that’s doing a disservice to say any 12 year old isn’t aware enough to reliably retell their own story.

Maybe later in the book there’s an adult she’s able to confide in and receive support and praise from, maybe her parents go to therapy and her mom stops taking things out on her and her dad stops being an enabler. Idk. The conflicts and troubles in this book could still take place without our MC being the scapegoat kid in an unhealthy family dynamic.

Paloma and her family have a gift. An extraordinary gift. They are mediums and can communicate with ghosts to help people with their grief. Especially Paloma’s Abuela is famous for her readings. She has a TV show and goes on tour every year. But Paloma’s mother is not a fan of Abuela’s fame. For her, the whole medium thing is too dangerous for her daughters and being recognized everywhere is getting too much. So Paloma’s parents decide to move from Miami to California to start a new life without fame and ghosts. But Paloma has other plans. She wants to become an accomplished medium like her grandmother. The only way to do that is to sneak readings at her new school and become an Instagram hit. Trying to do this under the radar of her mother and tattletale little sister, Paloma makes a terrible mistake opening a portal that swarms her school with ghosts that she can’t get rid of. She could really use some help navigating life as the new girl and budding medium sensation, but it feels like she is all alone. Can she solve the problem without her family getting involved, or does she need to come clean?

This story reminded me a lot of the Disney movie Encanto. Mostly because of the family that shares special powers, everyone with a variation of their gift. But also the bonds that hold this family together. Other than that, it was a relatable story about a tween moving to a new town and school and her challenges of making friends. It’s hard enough for a non-medium. But ever so much harder for Paloma to deal with her newly gained powers without the support of her family. Making mistakes trying to impress new friends in due course. Overall, it was a wholesome story about finding one’s place in a new environment with a touch of the supernatural.

I really enjoyed this one even though I didn’t like Paloma sneaking around and breaking every rule her family and mother gave her. But that’s just being a teenager, I guess. I’m sure we all did similar things to get away with stuff.

A great middle-grade fantasy that tackles significant lessons about bullying, boundaries, and the importance and complexity of relationships with older relative with a delightful magical twist.

Thank you to Inkyard Press and NetGalley for letting me read an advanced reader's copy of this sweet adventure!

I absolutely loved this debut middle grade novel and am so excited to see that it's planned as a series.

Paloma is a tween who comes from a long line of psychics of different specialties who has just come into her powers. On top of that, her immediate family has just moved across the country from her close-knit extended family and the friends she's had her whole life. Palomar reacts as any young girl would, but she also finds a way to fit in at her new school. She just hopes her new friends like her for herself and not just her pay his powers.

There were moments where I found myself questioning Paloma and her decision making skills but she found her way in the end. This story wraps up nicely while leaving room for more stories starring Paloma and her friends and family. I read this book in one evening because it had me hooked from the very first pages.

I love that this book includes ghosts in a non-scary atmosphere so it is accessible to people who don’t enjoy the horror genre but like a little paranormal activity. I also love the Cuban American representation and the acknowledgment that not all children with parents and/or family that speak Spanish are fluent by default. The cover illustration is beautiful.

This is one of my favorite books! I loved how I could relate to having a really annoying sister who always blames things on me. And the part when she proved everyone wrong! I also loved the surprise part! It literally made me go what?!!?

I was provided an early ebook copy of this book from Netgalley but this review is all my own.

Totally Psychic by Brigid Nelson @tinbridges was such a cute read. Paloma’s abuela is a world famous psychic medium and her whole family has their own unique powers and now Paloma has come into her own psychic abilities. When her parents decide to move from Miami and their whole family to California, Paloma is devastated and quickly tries to figure out how to impress her abuela so she can go on tour with her. She starts hosting reading at school and everything goes well until one time at a party she breaks the rules and accidentally opens the spirit portal up and lets in more than she meant to. Now she has to figure out how to fix it and also deal with a protective and sometimes grumpy mom that seemingly has eyes in the back of her head, her little sister who is always racing around and telling on her and making new friends in a new school.

It was definitely a cute story with lots heart. I loved the ghosts that Paloma meets in her new house and school especially Beryl. Paloma’s quirky family are also great with all their different psychic talents. Lots of fun references too, like putting in Ghostbusters to get rid of a spirit that didn’t want to go or a Good Place defence in one of the Instagram account names. I enjoyed the whole Instagram/TikTok angle to the next generations talents. I also liked Paloma’s talent for flowers and how they worked with her abilities to help her interpret the messages from spirits. Lots of good messaging about peer pressure and the importance of family.

I love childrens' and middle grade books that confront death and the afterlife. In this day and age, awareness of death and the cultural practices surrounding it are absolutely essential when so much is around us. Brigid Martin's book is a diverse take on a family of mediums and a young protagonist marketing communication with the afterlife. I found a lot of the lore in it really quaint, with cute details like putting on Ghostbusters the movie to banish spirits. Protagonist Paloma is a spirit medium with some particular powers; messages from beyond appear to her as flowers, whose symbolism she must then interpret as warnings or other communications, and I found this floral magic really cute.

The book addresses several significant "lessons" for its audience and target age group, from bullying, drawing boundaries with friends despite that urge to impress, handling the disappointment of older relatives etc. It was interestingly modern, too, as Paloma sets up livestreams to broadcast her skills while doing readings for her classmates. But she begins to ignore signs she's seen, ignore her better judgment, and consequences soon come to call. The old "even if you can, should you" lesson rears its head.

Overall this was a really cute book full of heart, with a protagonist who has good intentions, and memorable family bonds grounding her along the way. Four full stars.

This is a cute story about a young girl who just got her psychic powers and her adjusting to them and her families new move. It was a light easy read and I enjoyed it. My only problem was that if I put it down nothing drew me back to pick it up. It took me longer to read it than expected because of this. I wish the characters had more depth and pulled me back in.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to review this book.

On the surface, Totally Psychic is a story about a twelve-year-old girl with the ability to see ghosts and all the high jinks that ensue because of it. However, the book is about so much more than that. It is about valuing your family and friends, and putting pettiness and anger behind you in favor of bolstering love and connection. It also greatly emphasizes the importance of living your life for the right reasons, like being selfless and helping others when you can. I think it is a great book to help kids that are on their journey of self-discovery and have new responsibilities to navigate.

*Thank you NetGalley and Inkyard Press for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!*

I loved Totally Psychic so much! It was such a fun story full of ghosts, family, friendship and figuring out life as a psychic tween in a brand new city. I highly recommend this for the middle grade readers in your life!

I loved the characters so much! I thought the family dynamics were wonderfully written and I enjoyed seeing the mother/daughter and sister/sister problems find a heartwarming resolution. While the story had its fantasy elements at its core it was about the struggles any 12 year old girl might face (fights with her mom, fights with her little sister and struggles fitting in at a new school.) I am curious to see if this becomes a series because I would love to see Paloma and Magdalena or tour with their grandmother!