The concept had the potential to be interesting, but the writing bogged down in way too many points of view and subplots, though I do always appreciate a perspective from a dog! The book didn't seem to tell a coherent story.

The book starts with Maya in a mental institution after a meltdown she had at a swim meet. Maya can hear the thoughts of everyone around her, which can get overwhelming. As she reintegrates with her parents and starts a new school, making new friends and meeting a fascinating Buddhist-obsessed boy, she finds new ways to cope with the chaos with the help of her therapist, Amy.

This book tried to be too many things at once - a commentary on mental illness and how society treats people who are different, a fierce feminist manifesto, a tender coming-of-age and first love story, and a treatise on climate change and the stress it puts on upcoming generations. If the author had picked one or two of these things and focused on that, I think it would have been a much stronger book.

This story seemed to be all over the place. There were so many sub stories going on that it was hard to follow the main one. A couple of times, I had to look back to figure out who's story we were on.
The concept of always knowing what everyone is thinking seemed to fall apart at various times. I have read stories where this worked well. Specifically when the the person was more of a conduit - so it made sense that they wouldn't know everything. But in this story that is not the case,
The beginning of the story also seemed to be a higher level where mental illness might be linked with reading minds. And I got so excited to see where it would go from there. But then it morphed into using this ability to help friends and family.
I'm sure that for many readers, you will enjoy this book. It just wasn't the right book for me.

I loved the premise of Mysterious Ways and our main character, Maya, seemed so interesting! I loved that she was able to see so much about people's past, present, future, thoughts, the list goes on!

Unfortunately, this one fell a bit flat for me. I felt the pacing was way too slow so it kept losing my attention. I also didn’t love the characters, including Maya.

Thank you to St. Martins Press & Wednesday Books for my copy of this!

DNF @16%

Something about Maya just immediately rubbed me the wrong way. I made it just past the POV of the dog and this was just too stream of consciousness for me. Considering Maya can read everyone's thoughts, that stream of consciousness got convoluted.

Short and Sweet Review
When Maya looks at someone she’s instantly able to know about their history. As nice as this seems this power becomes overwhelming and it starts to bring her down, which is why she’s sent to Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility. Maya is also going to start school soon which is going to be tough but when she meets Tyler she wants to know everything about him, so maybe her power can come in handy.
This book is 332 pages and I’m going to admit I had no idea what was going on, and I think it’s because of how the book is written. We have chapters with Maya’s POV and then sprinkled in are other characters POVs and it all seemed disjointed. Towards the end I feel like I kind of knew what was happening but I’m still not completely sure. Maya is able to hear people’s thoughts and sometimes she can influence their thoughts and make them change their minds about things and she considers herself to be God. I think the premise sounded great but the execution wasn’t great. I also had a hard time connecting with Maya and the other characters.
Overall, I spent most of the book trying to figure out what was going on and I failed. I wish I liked this book but I couldn’t it was way too confusing for me to follow along.

This was an absolute gem of a book to read and I really enjoyed it. I definitely think my patrons will love it as well!

This book came out of the gate saying some really negative things about God and his deity. While I really enjoyed the writing style and the concept of the story, I just couldn't get over those comments, even as I continued reading.

Mysterious Ways is a rather unique read, especially in YA. Diving into the mind of Maya, it’s an exploration of our modern world and Maya’s life in her small town as she deals with reading the minds of everyone and dealing with “only evil continually”, feeling herself as a godlike being here to take on the weight of the world.

The concept of Maya being able to read minds because women have to be likable was really interesting, and made for a good setup. What goes on in people’s minds can be quite interesting and sometimes disturbing. And through these thoughts, she’s grown pessimistic of humanity, and believes that soon, the world will be flooded again to erase evil and wickedness, much like in the story of Noah’s Arc. This ability also leads her to landing in the psychiatric hospital when the story begins. After the first 10% of the story, things pick up for me. Most of the story is told in Maya’s POV as she’s trying to live a normal teen life, but we do get small bits from others in the community, giving us a greater scope of what’s going on. However, through her life experiences, Maya does change and grow, and it’s fitting to the tone of the story.

The book has a “hippie” energy, but it fits the story, as Maya’s parents own a record store and the worldview and narration of the story leans very progressive (at least in terms of US politics).

The humor was well placed and the mostly lighthearted tone to the prose helped the story from getting too dark. This book deals with just about all the dark/triggering topics you can in YA, including (but not limited to) mental health, self harm, suicide, sexual content (the chapter “Maximumlism” deals with a slightly spicy scene), and naming specific news/current events from the 1950’s to now (mostly the tragic kind). Then again, it’s about “only evil continually” for Maya. There’s plenty of profanity as well.

The narration by Georgina Sadler was perfect for the tone of the story and did an excellent job.

If you’re looking for something that might give you a little levity in a world that seems hopelessly dark, this might be for you.

Absolute nonsense parroting every current msm talking point and clown world political narrative. It’s no wonder our kids are so misguided and indoctrinated when this narrative is everywhere. Sad. The story sounded cute, but the constant white male hate and climate change rhetoric ruined it for me. No thank you. - DNF

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really wanted to enjoy this book but I just couldn’t get into it. The cover is really cute and the summary of the book made it seem really promising. I just couldn’t relate or connect with the main character, Maya and the story seemed a lot different than I expected it to be like.

There was point of views from new characters every few chapters including Maya’s dog and it jumped around a lot too which confused me.

Maya has powers where she can know what everyone she meets is thinking even about her. She’s also able to use her powers by manipulating others thoughts by making them think about something else like a song for example or push down a thought to try to make them feel better. She can also say something in other people’s heads. For example telling her mother she loves her. I don’t think the characters are aware she’s doing this at least from the pages I read.

It is a unique book and I haven’t read any previous books like this. I’m sure someone else would enjoy it especially someone catered to the young adult audience. This book just wasn’t for me. I unfortunately had to DNF at 20% but I do wish the author the best and I hope this book finds the right audience.

Entertaining coming of age story. All the ups and downs of real life. Some things were not completely believable but it was still entertaining.

This was a cute YA read of a girl who knows everything...no she really does. Not in the stereotypical teenager way, in a really, truly, she knows it all I liked this and thought it was a sweet YA read that anyone in that age group, or even an older group who enjoys YA reads.

I was so excited to this read but unfortunately just ended up being confused and annoyed at Maya, the main character. There were so many topics and stereotypes touched on it made it feel chaotic and overwhelming. I was unable to latch on to a narrative that felt cohesive and ended up annoyed with the characters.

It feels like the book was trying to be relatable to "Gen Z" but comes off as feeling more like a "boomer" who had a couple of conversations with a "Gen Z" teen and wrote a book.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 &| 𝐀𝐫𝐜 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰
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Gosh, I am a SUCKER for books with title chapters (name of chapters), I just get so excited to see that lol I know lame!

The premise and the cover art are what caught my attention to this story, but unfortunately, the story itself wasn't keeping my attention. I was just confused.

The audiobook was good! The narrator did a good job. The audiobook rating itself would be a 4 🌟

𝙳𝙽𝙵 @ 50%
𝙽𝚘𝚝 𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐
𝙱 𝚄 𝚃 𝚒𝚏 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚘𝚏 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸 𝚊𝚕𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚎 . . . 2.5 🌟
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𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 Aug.27
Thank you, Netgalley, macmillanAudio for the audiobook, and St. Martin Press for the eBook for my honest review.

This book was just underwhelming for me. The POVs seemed very disjointed and didn't follow a great flow. The whole book was just very slow and hard to stay interested in.

Well, that was a disappointment... Although the novel seemed to have an interesting premise, it didn't come across as being a cohesive narrative. The multiple points of view didn't dovetail with each other, which then led to an almost scatter-brained story. And, I don't appreciate novels where the author's political views gets imbued into the storyline. One star DNF at 19%

I was invited to read a DRC from St. Martin's Press through NetGalley. This review is completely my own and reflects my honest thoughts and opinions.

I found that this was another book where the description promised more than the book delivered. I thought the concept of the book was interesting but I didn't love the characters, particularly Maya's friend who's way of speaking I found irritating. The characters felt two dimensional and didn't have the personality I think the author was going for. I found the story to be slow and not engaging. I did finish the book, however it wasn't for me.

Review: Mysterious Ways by Wendy Wunder

This teen contemporary novel is great for mental health representation and looking at how harmful our thoughts can be. In a nonlinear way, it emphasizes that our thoughts are not ultimate truth and that healing is not a single step but a series of progressions toward it.

While the story has some very important themes and addresses a lot of teen turmoil and the importance of connection and belonging, I found it difficult to follow at times. The narrative was difficult to follow at first and sometimes the character voices felt similar enough to confuse me as to who was speaking or thinking.

Maya, the protagonist, is able to read others thoughts and tweak them. I’m still unsure of the purpose of this except to show the difficulty of navigating the anxiety of everyone’s negativity and their negativity toward her and each other. However, I’m unsure exactly, as she also believes at one point that she may be omniscient. All that to say, it was a unique way to see in the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story.

Overall, it was a unique and interesting read, but I had some difficulty following it.

Such an interesting plot! Maya is a teenager who can just glance at a person and instantly know everything about them. It is hard to make friends with anyone as you already know everything about them. It would seem that the burden of the world is all on your shoulders. I cannot think of anything worse.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Mysterious Ways by Wendy Wunder is a poignant, funny, and relatable story that delves into the complexities of life. With its witty humor, clever storytelling, and meaningful insights, this novel offers a unique perspective on the ups and downs of life. Through its quirky characters and unexpected twists, Mysterious Ways reminds readers that even when life seems to be falling apart, there is always a glimmer of hope waiting to be discovered.