Life

Against her better judgment, Sydney asks her friends, Anna and Eve, to do a tarot card reading for her. Something is going on with her dad; she's afraid he may have lost his job again and that her mother might be too fed up with him this time for them to stay married. Although Sydney has never really believed that the cards can tell the future, both Anna and Eve have had such good luck with their recent readings--Anna getting a good boyfriend and Eve auditioning for a reality show--and Syd finally grows worried enough to find out what the future holds for her father. Instead of reassuring her, the reading turns up bad, even ending with the Death card. Sydney swears that this is her punishment for trying to cheat the system and look ahead, but maybe it's not real. Maybe, if she believes hard enough, she can prevent her dad spiraling out of control and the breakdown of her family. She resolves that she's going to maintain her trust in her father, the only person who really understands her shyness, dedication to music, and love of all living things. With Anna and Eve overly involved in their own lives and promising futures, Syd starts to feel that she and her friends are growing apart, and she doesn't have the tools to handle it yet. When things start to go awry in the lives of her friends, Sydney holds on to her hope that, if the cards were wrong about her friends, then maybe they were wrong about her father, too. But then her father makes a devastating mistake that rips away Sydney's trust, and it becomes painfully obvious to Syd that there may be little she can do about her father's problems, or the changes that she and her friends must experience. Third in a series, I enjoyed the characterizations and storytelling in this book so much that I'm going to be hunting down the first two books very soon. I also appreciated the author's approach to presenting tarot cards to younger readers, demonstrating how such fortune-telling techniques can be open to all kinds of interpretation, not necessarily good or bad. Reviewed by: Allison Fraclose

You can't control what life is going to throw at you, but you can control how you catch it and how you deal with it. When an elderly woman passes away, she leaves her three cats and her deck of tarot cards to her young neighbor Anna and her two best friends, Eve and Syd. Each girl narrates one book of the In the Cards trilogy, which is best read in order: Love, Fame, and Life. The quietest of the three friends takes the reins in the third and final volume, Life. Syd likes to play piano, but is reluctant to play in front of other people. She used to love practicing with her father, who is also a pianist, but they haven't played together in a little while. Her dad isn't acting like himself lately. He's had trouble at work and seems sad almost all of the time now. Syd thinks he's drinking when she and her mother are gone or asleep. Meanwhile, Syd has become like a mother to her elderly cat, Beesley. He has special medication that he must take regularly, so Syd takes extra special care of him. When Eve gets the chance to audition for a televised talent program, Syd wants to go, but she also wants to stay home to be with Beesley. Her father swears he'll give Bees his medicine, and her mother tells her to trust her dad and that everything will be okay. Syd almost cancels her plans, but ends up taking the trip. When she comes back home . . . it's horrible. This is a great conclusion to the trilogy, which I highly recommend to ages 10 and up. I really wish this were an ongoing series! Each girl has a strong voice and sense of self, and they acknowledge the fact that their relationships with each other are different (Eve and Sydney are friends by association, because they are both Anna's friends, but they aren't really that close) and evolving (Anna and Syd are neighbors, but Syd doesn't go to private school with Eve and Anna; they each worry about how things will be when they go to high school). Kudos to author Mariah Fredericks for continuing to deliver insightful and realistic books for kids and teens.