Maggie O’Malley needs a quick influx of cash, or her family home will be auctioned off to pay the loans and taxes that her deadbeat ex-husband refused to pay. When her best friend, Wendy Hayes, learns of a “Magic, Moonlight, and Mayhem” contest in Ireland with a cash prize of $500,000, she convinces Maggie to join in. Maggie and Wendy stay on the Ravenwood Estate in Ireland and meet the handsome, eligible Ravenwood twins, Caedmon and Kellen. Maggie doesn’t believe in all the woo-woo spiritual stuff involved in the competition, but she’s willing to fake it for a chance to start her life over. Wendy gets sick immediately after they get to their rooms, leaving Maggie to face the challenges alone. It transpires that Kellen has been cursed for six centuries, and this is his last chance at freedom before succumbing entirely (“Seven days to either true freedom or eternal imprisonment”). Caedmon believes the solution is a human sacrifice, something Kellen refuses, especially when he learns that the one human who could break his curse is not just the original spellcaster’s descendant—one Maggie O’Malley—but his fated true love. Burright’s romantic fantasy packs a lot of action into one novel. The contest, Maggie’s ostensible reason for being in Ireland, fades into the background as the story progresses, and the rituals performed as part of the competition feel underdeveloped and almost childish. It’s clear the author concentrated more on developing the characters and the love story, and it was time well spent: Kellen is open and honest with Maggie, expresses his love and devotion to his brother, and refuses to compromise his values, making him stand out in a world of literary alpha males.

In three interactive stories with multiple endings, readers navigate Dragon and Unicorn’s friendship along with them in different situations. The “frenemies” label from the title isn’t really accurate: Bespectacled green Dragon and blue-eyed, blue-horned Unicorn are best friends and truly care about each other, but each needs to speak up to remind the other that they have different wants and needs. In “The Clubhouse,” Dragon prefers a neat and tidy space with just the two of them, while Unicorn wants all her stuff—and to invite other friends. In “The Sleepover,” Unicorn is scared of ghost stories, and Dragon is overwhelmed by too many activities. In “The Playground,” they argue over what to do when they find someone else’s lost toy. Both characters sometimes make mistakes and behave selfishly; neither remains on the moral high ground all the time. But they also model empathy, have difficult conversations, and compromise so they can make each other happy. The Choose Your Own Adventure–style stories allow readers to make decisions along with Dragon and Unicorn, trying out different paths and solutions. Personalized emanata—smoke and flames for Dragon, glitter for Unicorn—add a special touch.

As war rages, a conspiracy led by Calinoran nobility seeks to remove Calinor’s queen by any means necessary. The Larks, self-styled patriots, recently kidnapped Princess Adelisa, who goes by Ash and has a disability that requires her to use braces and a cane. Now the Larks have deadly plans for the city of Haven’s harvest festival—plans that Ash and her gender-nonconforming squire, Splinter, attempt to uncover through illicit nighttime visits to Haven and other avenues. Investigating the conspiracy exacerbates Ash’s struggles with a family secret that makes her question who she is, Calinor’s class system, and the responsibility of royalty like her to the people. Splinter is concerned about upcoming squire exams, keeping Ash safe in Haven, and exploring gender identity. Both 12-year-olds worry about whom they can trust. Ash’s growing discomfort with a class system that devalues and disregards commoners and soldiers shapes this socially aware fantasy, whose action picks up in the second half of the story. The characters are layered and sympathetic, and their evolution is believable, although Ash’s arc feels more developed than Splinter’s. While physical and sensory details bring scenes to life, some worldbuilding remains lightly developed. Readers must be familiar with the earlier volume to understand the many references to people and incidents from the first book. Most characters are cued white.

While watching the Perseids meteor shower with best friend Naznen, Aya is hit by a shooting star that leaves her with mysterious powers—steam puffs out of her ears, flames shoot out of her mouth, and flowers spring up where her tears fall. A confused Aya discovers that a prophecy that “a star would strike a special child” might be connected to her father’s disappearance when she was a baby. Meanwhile, rumors of abductions by a criminal gang circulate throughout Alferra, causing fear. After the evil, power-hungry witch Abnus the Great ambushes the royal family and claims the throne, Aya and her mother flee, hiding in neighboring Al Bahr. But when Ammu goes missing, Aya is compelled to return to Alferra to confront the witch and her army of demonic, red-eyed bhoots. Dreamy, artistic Aya, a brown-skinned Muslim girl who wears a headscarf, loves stargazing and is a likable protagonist; her transformation from diffident schoolgirl to brave hero will strike a chord. By contrast, many other characters, especially the antagonist, Abnus, feel flatter and less developed. The interesting premise is let down by slow pacing and a meandering narrative but is offset by a satisfying ending. The characters are predominantly brown-skinned. McKean’s striking gray-toned illustrations complement this uneven yet heartening story.

Opening and closing with scenes from a gig as a 33-year-old burlesque dancer, Campbell shows off her experience as a stand-up comic with a quip-laden narrative in which she chronicles both her youth as a picky eater from childhood through college and a yearslong, riotously contentious, on-again, off-again relationship with a sometimes pushy, sometimes disturbingly sensitive foodie she dubs “E.” “My truest self is a 5-year-old,” she starts out, “legitimately terrified” of most food from a young age. But “I fucking LOVE Kraft cheese,” and so throughout ensuing trials and tribulations she inserts frequent recipes for comfort foods like Burnt Potato Chips (“pairs well” with gin and tonics and M&M’s). In art as busy and disheveled as her life, she crams friends, family, foods, and winningly ungainly images of her own figure, along with hand-lettered commentary and dialogue, into panels and montages that teem with informal line work and pop with colored highlights. Reflecting the classic stand-up’s truism that “people think it’s funny when I’m sad,” even when she’s listing her fears or turns to bulimia while wrestling with shame and depression at her weight, her tone is at its lowest only self-deprecatory. Anyway, it’s the high moments that best capture attention—from a wonderfully epiphanic sequence of reaction shots in the wake of her first primary school teacher’s announcement of “Snack Time!” and the mind-bending discovery that cream cheese wrapped in salami actually tastes good to a final view of her triumphantly twirling her pasties onstage while declaring a well-earned determination “to live my life the way that I want!”