“Savvy” by Ingrid Law
After the overwhelming negativity of the last book I read, I figured I needed a bit of light reading. I recently acquired Savvy via Bookmooch; it’s been on my wish list since a couple of years ago, when I was really into young adult and middle grade books.
Savvy features Mibs Beaumont and her family, who have unique abilities called savvies, which they come into on their thirteenth birthday. Mibs’ mother has a savvy for doing things right, her brothers can disrupt electricity and cause hurricanes, and her grandfather can stretch land. It is two days before Mibs’ thirteenth birthday and she can’t wait for her savvy to arrive – but then her father is in a horrible accident, and her previous concerns seem irrelevant.
Law is a good writer with her whimsical turns of phrase and her well drawn characters. Although the book takes place over the span of less than a week, Mibs learns a lot – that people’s outward actions and how they feel inside can be very different, that some people don’t want to be helped, that bad things happen for a good reason sometimes. She also makes friends and bonds with her family even more.
This book is aimed at a middle-grade audience and although it was good, I found it a bit simplistic. I don’t think this this is only because it’s a middle grade – I recently read and loved Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, another kids’ book with a first person perspective about people with strange powers, but that was by Brandon Sanderson and had a very genre savvy protagonist and a clever worldwide conspiracy. Savvy is a gentler, more personal book about a girl starting to grow up.
I would definitely recommend Savvy for young readers, but I won’t be prioritising reading the sequel.