By Jessica Townsend
A girl who's been told her whole life she's cursed to die at midnight gets whisked to a secret magical city and one wild chance to earn a place there.
Morrigan Crow was born on the unluckiest day there is, which makes her a cursed child, blamed for every broken thing in town and doomed to die at midnight on Eventide. Then a big, red-haired, ridiculous man named Jupiter North turns up, grabs her hand, and races her out from under death and into Nevermoor, a hidden city that runs on wonder. There's a talking cat the size of a bear, a hotel that redecorates your bedroom to match your mood, and one enormous catch: to stay, and to live, Morrigan has to win a spot in the Wundrous Society, beating hundreds of gifted children through four escalating trials. Everyone else has an obvious talent. Morrigan can't find hers. And something made of smoke and shadow is hunting her across the city.
This is the book that out-competes a screen because the world is so much fun to be inside that a child forgets to look up. Townsend front-loads the wonder, the impossible hotel, the giant talking cat, the umbrella-rail transit, so your child is hooked before the plot even tightens, and then the four trials give the story a video-game shape they already understand: clear a round, face a harder one, want to know what's next. It's whimsical and funny, which keeps the darker thread, a child raised to believe she deserves to die, from ever sitting heavy. And it's the first of a fat series, so a child who falls in has a long runway ahead of them.