On the surface, these two books don’t have much in common with each other. Rialto by Kate Milford is a contemporary middle grade fantasy book with all of the magic weaving in and out of everyday life that I’d expect from one of her books. Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert is a teen romance that will have you seeing heart-eyes. What both books have in common is telling stories about people with serious mental health issues, both from the perspectives of the people living with the conditions and of the people who care about them.
Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert. Joy Revolution, 2023. ISBN 9780593482339. Read from a library copy. Ebook and audiobook available on Libby.
I fell for our heroine, Celine, at her first line:
“It’s the first day of school and I’m already being forced to socialize.”
Celine currently has one best friend, a thriving TikTok channel where she investigates conspiracy theories, and the life goal of becoming a lawyer, to repay her mother for all the hardship of being a single mother and maybe also for someback to the father who abandoned Celine and her mother and sister for a second family ten years earlier. Still on this first day, she comes across a leaflet advertising an enrichment program with the possibility of a full university scholarship for the winner, sponsored by Celine’s idol, legendary human rights lawyer Katharine Breakspeare. This is what she’s focused on at school – definitely not her former fellow outcast and best friend, Brad, even if he has definitely gotten cuter in the past few years, and is now horribly in the same philosophy class as she is. But the enrichment program involves some pretty intense outdoor survival competitions, including camping – camping – and other all-weather outdoor activities. Naturally, Brad is there, too – outdoors being good neither for Celine’s general preferences nor for Brad’s OCD. Making it through the competition will definitely require them to get over their rocky past long enough to help each other – which might also involve enough talking for them to work through just what went wrong with their friendship and why they’re making the choices there are.
This is a sweet, no-spice book, as is appropriate for teens – but the rest of what I love about Talia Hibbert’s books are here, with neurospicy people learning about themselves and growing into relationship, in the context of being Black in Britain. Celine might get a hard time for being smart and snarky, but not for being plus-sized. I also enjoyed the hilarious glossary of British English at the front, but am resisting the temptation to type several of them in here for your entertainment. You’ll just have to go track the book down.
For more teen romance books dealing with mental health issues, try This is My Brain in Love by I.W. Gregorio and Emergency Contact by Mary H. K. Choi.
Rialto by Kate Milford. Clarion, 2026. ISBN 978-1328466914. Read from a purchased copy. Ebook and audiobook available on Libby.
Siblings Ivy and Dahlia Vicar, 14 and 12, are traveling with their parents to Rialto, Missouri. Many of their family vacations have involved trips for their mother’s research on defunct amusement and theme parks, and Rialto certainly has one of those. But this summer is different. Dahlia has had severe bouts of anxiety and has less capacity for socializing than she did in the past, while Ivy’s worry for her shows itself in a need for constant connection and playing the same car game they always. Rialto itself is different – the town is home to Mrs. Vicar’s best friend and her husband and stepson, Remy, just a bit older than Dahlia. Rialto the park closed not because people stopped coming but because – as rumor has it, anyway – a forest sprang up overnight that forced everyone out of the park and blocked the way for anyone to get in again. The strangeness of the forest is immediately obvious when they enter the town, crowded with trees that look old-growth yet are far too close to buildings. .
Once they get to the house where “honorary Aunt Sally”, Uncle Bailey, and Remy live, they learn more. They are all staying there, in the house which Aunt Sally and her family inherited from her beloved friend, Aunt Jess. Aunt Jess was a musician like Uncle Bailey and Remy, and collected violins and beautiful music boxes. Now she’s requested that Remy deliver some of these music boxes along with letters from her to people around the town associated with Rialto the park. As Remy and the girls travel around delivering the letter, they learn more and more secrets that might help them understand just why Rialto closed.
The woods are filled with creatures that look just like the ones on the carousel from Rialto – recognizable from an old brochure – and the clues point towards things that our everyday reality can’t explain. As in several of Kate Milford’s books, there is in this book a book of traditional tales whose characters and events braid in and out of the modern-day world. In this case, the book is called Tales of Marchen Woods. My first instinct is to read it as “Tales of Märchen Woods”, as Märchen is the German word for folk and fairy tales. But without the umlaut, are they March-en Woods, as in the woods that march on their own? Either way, the name is shared by the actual but still mystical woods in and around Rialto. Also: there is a bobbin lacemaker! My mother makes bobbin lace, but I’ve never seen one in a children’s book before.
Along with the magic, I really appreciated the family dynamics here. Ivy is clearly annoying Dahlia with her concern, yet I could see my own actions as a parent of an anxious kid mirrored in hers (oops!). Dahlia has worked hard on skills to balance her brain, using art, breathing techniques, working with a therapist, and recognizing when her social battery is so depleted that she needs time alone to recover. Her father has a similar brain, and also models using therapy and taking breaks from the groups of people as needed. Parents and kids take time to talk tough stuff over, and Ivy and Dahlia both want to stay in relationship with each other even though it’s hard. Remy and his father are Black, and deal with some resistance from the people in town, though it wasn’t clear if it was a race issue or because they are part of the magical Roamer community. As with the last Kate Milford book I read, The Thief Knot, there are enough references to the mythology of her other books that I really wished I’d had time to re-read all the others before reading this one so I’d catch them all. This is an irresistable story of magic, of blood family and found family, and a place that readers will wish they could visit themselves.
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