Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors

$19.99
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UPC:
9781761180750

Product Description

I don't know about love. I suspect the emotion that others apparently feel all the time is just . . . absent from me. Like there's an ingredient missing from the recipe. The possible exception is Gran. Grace cares about only two things: performing magic and her cantankerous gran. Gran shares her prickly personality and spiky sense of humour, and she's the only one Grace lets into her tightly locked heart - until she meets Simon, a schoolmate who promises to help her turn her magic tricks into a small business and social media stardom. When Gran is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Grace moves in to become her primary carer. With the help of Simon and some sleight of hand, Grace is determined to bring joy back into their lives. And when she confronts her worst fear, she realises maybe her heart doesn't need to stay locked away after all. A funny, compelling and fresh story from the author of the bestselling books My Life As An Alphabet and A Song Only I Can Hear.

Other Details

Author:
Barry Jonsberg (AU)

Reviews

  • 3
    death, bereavement, coming of age, loneliness, magic tricks, family, resilience, cancer, hope, friendship, school life, teen years, alcoholism, childhood trauma, repressed memories, therapy

    Posted by Novel Insight Reviews on 30th Jan 2024

    Grace McKellon is obsessed with magic tricks. She has no friends; a hallucination of her dead brother visits her most days; she has a history of childhood trauma that she cannot remember; and her one surviving parent is an alcoholic. Grace gets as close to normal as she's ever gotten when a teenager called Simon tries to make friends with her at school. He has a plan to launch her career as a magician on TikTok. But just when Grace is finding some normality in her life, her world comes crashing down. Her Gran, whom she is the closest to out of anybody she knows, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Grace moves in to care for her Gran, but as Gran deteriorates, Grace's long-repressed memories of the car crash that killed her father and brother start to resurface. Grace has to face her deepest fear of all: learning to feel loss and love.