Not even the Marable School for Girls could contain Jules. She was expelled for being too effervescent, focusing her efforts on charming her peers rather than keeping up with her studies. Jules returns home to live with her magical mother, Muv, and directs her energy toward befriending Muv’s newest student, Simon. While Muv and Simon try to untangle the complexities of their magic, Jules bounces between fencing lessons and working the room. And as Jules and Simon grow closer, their pasts and family history become known, and the mysteries they uncover don’t always reveal easy truths.
This short story is told from Jules’s perspective, a teenage girl overflowing with wit and charm. She is a force of nature, pulling us through the story and hoping we can keep up with her quick mind and boundless energy. Uncommon Charm follows the erratic pace of our young, extroverted protagonist and jumps quickly from thoughts to events, to huge moral life quandaries. Jules lets everything roll right off her shoulders, and it’s interesting to see her react to some difficult truths that are starting to destroy her child-like innocence. If Jules is the sun, Simon is her moon. He is a quiet, awkward, and steady presence who is a nice soothing balm to Jules’s chaos. The friendship that blossoms between them is a beautiful thing, and these two opposites show up for one another in the best ways possible.
The authors spend more time philosophizing about magic than letting the reader see it in practice. I like this choice because the magic really isn’t the point of this story. The page space is then dedicated to asking questions about the magician’s relationship to magic instead. And with this stylistic choice, we get to learn more about the magician because their relationship with magic tells us so much about who they are as a character. Muv will remain a pretty mysterious person to the reader, but these introspective questions come into play as Simon comes into his own magic. It’s such a beautiful way to get to know and understand him in such a short page count. Seeing how Simon views his magic and how he wants to use his magic is so enlightening and reveals the deepest parts of his character.
One of my favorite elements of this story is that it stays rooted in Jules’s perspective and reveals the mystery in the looks, whispers, and covert actions she picks up from the adults in the room. It’s undeniable that Muv is keeping a big secret from Jules, we just don’t know what that secret is. So we slowly pick up bits and pieces of the mystery along the way as Jules watches the adults interact. She can tell something isn’t quite right, but she’s too young to know of everyone’s past and understand how all the pieces of information fit together. The slow reveal feels so true to being a kid left out of the conversation until you’re simply too grown for them to keep hiding the truth. I loved how we kept pace with Jules and her youthful perspective as the wool was slowly uncovered from her eyes.
Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver is a sparkling little mystery. The magic and ghosts hover around the edges and give the tale an otherworldly tinge, but it feels more like a coming-of-age story that focuses on the loss of childhood innocence. Whether you get swept up in Jules’s energy or fall for Simon’s steadiness, both will charm you in this whirlwind, mysterious tale.
Rating: Uncommon Charm – 7.0/10
-Brandee