Title: Mysterious Ways
Author: Wendy Wunder
Length: 320 pages
Format: ebook arc
Pub Date: August 27, 2024
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Rating Out of 5: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Spice Level: open door-ish?
Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Maya can instantly uncover people's deepest secrets and failures, which often leaves her feeling overwhelmed. Sent to Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility and starting at a new school, she struggles with her gift. But when she meets Tyler, a guy she genuinely likes, Maya wonders if her ability could be used for good—and if it might help her win his heart.

Thoughts:
I’m not entirely sure what i just read, but I’m so glad i did! It uniquely dove into teens minds through Maya’s POV since she can read minds. It was thought provoking and heartwarming and hopeful. It addressed issues many young adults/teens face. It was interesting enough to keep me reading, but also not that much happened? It was at times amusing and humorous, and at other times, emotional and slightly depressing. Really random- but there was a mention of Yoga with Adrienne on YouTube, and that’s the yoga videos I watch so that was a fun little tidbit.

Special thanks to the @netgalley and @wednesdaybooks for the arc in exchange for my honest review!

Mysterious Ways written by Wendy Wunder was a bit of a flop for me, I don't know if it was the writing style, no connection to the characters, or if it was too YA for me, but I just couldn't get into this book, it was extremely slow getting into, but even throughout the book it was very slow paced. I don't want my review to deter anyone away from this book, but these are just my thoughts and opinions, feel free to read this book for yourself. I saw that pretty cover, I mean who wouldn't want to read a book with a rainy cover? And the synopsis sounded super promising, so I'm a bit disappointed that Mysterious Ways didn't work out for me, but it's okay, it's not the end of the world. My three stars isn't necessarily horrible, this book was definitely interesting, but for the reasons I stated above, I felt like it was in my best interest to rate this book three stars, if you can't respect that, kindly keep scrolling. It's 2024, there's no need to be rude or hateful because someone didn't like a book, please, remember to be respectful of others. Just because this book didn't work for me, I will still recommend it to others because it might work better for you.

THANK YOU TO NETGALLEY AND ST. MARTIN'S PRESS FOR AN ARC OF THIS BOOK IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW!!!!!!!

Maya is a seventeen year old that literally knows everything. I remember being seventeen thinking I knew everything, but boy was I completely wrong, I know many of you can relate to that, because what teenager never thought that before? In my opinion, Maya was a pick me girl, she was extremely rude, if you didn't agree with her or if you said something that wasn't correct, she made sure you knew you were 100% completely wrong. Maya is the type of person who has the world on top of her shoulders because of the way she acted, and she made sure you knew she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders and you should feel sorry for her. When Maya looks at someone, she instantly knows literally everything about them, such as their history, their private thoughts, their secret desires, and their most tragic failures. I couldn't connect with Maya at all, I just feel like there's absolutely no need to be rude just because someone doesn't agree with you or has different views than you. As I kept on reading this book, I just wanted to knock some common sense into Maya's head because of the way she was acting toward others.

I'm going to keep this review short and to the point because it just wasn't really for me, but based off the information I have provided, the ball is now in your court. If you decide to read this book, I hope you enjoy it more than I did, but if you don't enjoy this book either, I completely respect your opinions.

Tagged as 'sharp, hilarious and heartfelt' and I didn't find it to be any of those. Very juvenile in its execution.

Maya can read minds. In fact, people’s thoughts are constantly filling her mind if she’s in any proximity to them. High school = proximity.

The book starts with her having been put in a mental hospital because she had a bit of a public freakout due to being overwhelmed by so many thoughts in her head.

Once she’s released, she tries to prove to her parents she’s fine by doing her best to make friends and be “normal” at her new public school. She decides to help some of her peers who are suffering from self-loathing, home troubles, or poor grades. The one fear most of her GenZ peers have in common is an underlying environmental anxiety.

Written in first person POV, we see into Maya’s witty, cynical, burn-the-patriarchy teenage brain.

At times it felt like the plot was a bit flat, but it really just followed a fairly average teenager’s existence—which usually isn’t that thrilling. Besides the mind-reading stuff, she’s pretty average.

Mysterious Ways has themes of GenZ anxiety/cynicism, environmental apocalypse, the crushing weight of the patriarchy on men and women, and we see a little teenage love.

I adored Maya’s voice in this book, despite it being very different from what I usually read, which is definitely not “teenage litfic” as this seems to be.

I have DNFed this book only 2% in. Just from the first few pages I can tell this book is not for me. immediately on page 1, Wendy Wunder is implying that her character is more powerful than God, which is not a great way to start a book. Then the first chapter reads like a late 20s millennial, that doesn't really understand the lingo and dynamic of Gen Z but watched one YouTube video and dubbed themselves the expert. So it was just cringey and weird and incorporated a lot of big complicated words that just did not enhance the book at all. They just made it more uncomfortable.

I would look elsewhere for your next read because this book will make your blood boil if you feel any certain type of way by reading the news in this day in age. It was very showy in the look I'm so cool and progressive kind of way. It is like it tried to be a think piece for had no idea how to go about doing it. There are so many different POVs strung together in a chaotic narrative. With so many view points that this story was nearly impossible to follow. Their respective narratives didn't gel together. I found it hard to believe the character's stated ages.

I left this book feeling angry at the time I had wasted reading it.

An early review copy was provided to me by Wednesday Books via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I liked the mental health rep in this one but it wasn’t my favorite read ever, unfortunately, it was just too slow-paced for me.

This book makes its own rules. Maya, the narrator, is seventeen, and in a hospital receiving mental health treatment when the book opens. She admits she's had a breakdown, but she also believes she has god-like powers, sort of an extended empathy which she can extend to clean out the toxins of teenage life (she's very clear about the cruelty people show each other). It's written in short segments, so the reader has to reorient themselves frequently (this works well as a support for Maya's character, as she's impulsive, prone to snap judgements, and finds people overwhelming--readers get a taste of what things are like for her). She's not a comfortable narrator. I didn't find the book to be much like its summary, but then I also think it's a hard book to sum up (better to test out Maya's voice for yourself and see if you trust her to guide you through a whole novel). I think it will work really well for the right reader (I'm not sure I'm the right reader though).

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc. My opinions are all my own.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this title. One and a half stars, rounding up to two

This was definitely a unique young adult read. Make sure to check out the triggers warnings before reading as there was some serious topics that were included in this story. I enjoyed the main character’s journey and story and how they grew in in their relationships and community. I also enjoyed that we got to hear a bit from other characters throughout the story.

Maya: a word for illusion. In the sense that everything . . . all material reality . . . every sensory perception related to the material world is an illusion. Every tempting thing in the physical world is maya: a distraction from the spiritual path.
Cringey: The nickname from Maya's best friend and how I felt about this book.

Maya can hear the thoughts of most people around her. She uses her powers to fight for good in those she chooses.

I did enjoy the wiring style and the characters, but the continued references to any word ending in -archy were too much. Maya continued to believe she's part of god, and ends the story abruptly with a sudden revelation lacking depth.

Maya has been thinking of what to be when she grows up. She’s only 17, so she still has some time before she has to have it all figured out. But she has a very specific skill that could come in handy as, say, a bartender. Or an acrobat in the circus. Or as a god. Because when she meets people, she can read their minds. She knows what they’re thinking in the present moment, but she also knows their past. When she is in public, she is constantly hearing the voices of other people, which is how she ended up in the Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility.

She’s not really crazy. She just knows things. She doesn’t know where the gift came from. And she doesn’t know how to get rid of it. But after taking a break from the public at large (her Grippy Sock Vacation, as she calls is), Maya is ready to go back home. And she’s ready for a new school. She had a bit of a meltdown at her old school, jumping into the pool fully clothed at a swim meet, just to get a moment of silence from all the other voices in her head. So she needs a new school. And Bobby will be there, at New Town High. She can keep an eye on him. He had been at Whispering Pines too, crying for a week, as they tried to regulate his meds.

At her new school. Maya was introduced to room 143, a place where kids could hang out when they’re feeling overwhelmed. And that is where she meets Tyler. Tyler is a Buddhist and known at the school as something of a slut, but he knows how to meditate. He teaches Maya how to meditate, and she tries to use it when the noise of the world gets too much for her. At school, Maya makes friends. She tries to fit in. And when she meets with her therapist Amy, Maya decides it’s finally time to let someone in on how she can read minds. And she finds her purpose.

Well, she’s not entirely certain that it’s her purpose. But it’s something that can help her. She’s going to save the bobcats. There are some wild bobcats around town that the local hunters want permission to kill. Maya is going to start a club to save the bobcats. But she’s also going to use the club as a way to save the Bobcats, the students of New Town High, whose mascot is, obvs, a bobcat. Now Maya can take her ability t read minds and put it to use helping people. Some tasks are easy, like getting the shy girl who just wants to be kissed into a room with the boy who has a crush on her. Some take some more work, like helping her friend acquire thousands of dollars to create a pop-up store for her sneaker designs.

But fixing everyone else takes a lot out of her, and one rescue attempt goes horribly wrong, with Maya breaking her arm, ending up in the hospital, and then back to Whispering Pines. She feels like everything she had learned, everything she had put her energy into, had all gone wrong. She had failed. She’s not a god after all. But she may find out that there are others in her world who care for her and will go to bat for her when she can’t do it for herself.

Mysterious Ways is a stunning book about the ways we come together and hold each other up in difficult times. It’s a coming-of-age story that is studded with sparks of pop culture, music, and Gen Z rage. Author Wendy Wunder brings together fears of climate change, rage at the patriarchy, pop music, first love, bullying, friendship, mental health, and umami to create this story of healing and hope. Maya is a genuinely unique character who struggles not with wondering what others are thinking about her, but of knowing exactly what they think of her. She has wisdom and naivete, maturity and youth, and a the weight of finding balance in a life no one else can completely understand. She is funny and smart and caring, and listening to her monologue throughout this book is an inspiring experience.

I listened to the audio book for Mysterious Ways, narrated by Georgina Sadler, and I thought she had the perfect voice for Maya. The way she dramatized Maya’s story was perfection. I couldn’t imagine a better narrator for Maya’s story, and that made an interesting book a phenomenal listen.

Egalleys for Mysterious Ways were provided by Wednesday Books, and an early copy of the audio book was provided by Macmillan Audio, both through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Mysterious Ways has the opportunity to be something special, but that potential is never fully realized. There are two major things that get in the way — pacing and a lack of focus.

Author Wendy Wunder’s writing has a real stream-of-consciousness, acquired taste feel to it. The narrative gets bogged down by rambling that is often easier to skim rather than wading through. The more time you sit with Wunder’s prose, the more comfortable it gets, but many readers won’t have the patience.

With a lot of storylines and sub storylines running throughout Mysterious Ways it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on and who’s who, making you want a flow chart to keep everything straight. Themes of climate change, mental illness, feminism, societal pressures, and first love all come into play in one giant smooshed up mess.

And maybe that’s what Wunder was after.

Life is messy. And this latest generation of kids is dealing with a lot at once. It is hard to juggle it all. Expectations are high but feel unattainable. In that way, Wunder is successful. And young adults feeling this will certainly relate.

Still, there’s room for improvement. I suggest checking Mysterious Ways out from the library to see if it’s a good fit prior to purchasing.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Mysterious Ways follows teen Maya who has the power to read people's minds just by looking at them.

I tend to not mind a YA book that feels a like it was written by a grown up who's only ever met teenagers in passing, but with a seventeen year old narrator, I was a bit surprised at how out of touch this read felt. I was expecting something that felt a little more insightful, more self-aware, or at least that better carried the responsibility of a YA story about someone who knows everything about everyone. Instead, it was almost like the author was playing a game of How Many Gen-Z Tropes Can I Shove Into A Single Paragraph, and it all felt incredibly out of touch and honestly a little embarrassing.

This would have been redeemable, I think, if I'd felt like the book went somewhere that I liked. While Maya was set up as the perfectly flawed character, with plenty of room to grow, I was just a bit surprised that it didn't feel to me as if Maya actually grew meaningfully over the course of the book. I think that, in the end, there were some meaningful concepts pulled out of this plot, but it was really just bogged down by a whole lot of confusion and cringe.

This was a unique book. I really enjoyed the perspective of Maya and her ability to read others minds. Also, her believing she could be a God. Her trying to read the Bible in the mental hospital and trying to understand it. Plus, her doodles in the margins sound interesting. Sometimes I got the characters confused but overall really enjoyed the book.

I just thought there was too much going on. We have a main character (Maya) but we get chapters showing other characters related to the story and back to her, and them again. And also, the plot such as it is felt very thin to me. The whole book went to a very dark place (thankfully there was a trigger warning) but I just didn't understand what this book was trying to do. It just felt chaotic with no pay off. I stopped and started this one a few times because it did not grab me. I almost DNFed it at one point, but just pushed through.

"Mysterious Ways" follows Maya. Maya is a teen girl who is currently a patient at Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility in Pennsylvania. Maya tells us that she can hear the thoughts of people around her and is also able to think things that can change people and therefore has her thinking she's in essence god. Maya meets Bobby (a fellow patient) and starts to think about leaving Whispering Pines. When she does though she uses her powers to influence her parents, fellow students, and a boy that she likes.

Maya reads....off the whole book. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but she does not read as a 17 year old girl. And you can't add the 'powers' for why she reads off. I don't know. I think that someone this age would have some concerns, but it just read like a mad-lib of reddit comments from people pretending to be teen girls after a while.

The other characters read hollow to me. Tyler. Sigh. I don't even know. Maya treats him like a prop (my opinion) and there's no there there after a while. Lucy. Same issue. She was just there to be Maya's friend and nothing else. Bobby and that whole reveal thing had me going what the world is happening. Maya's parents too felt really thin. And considering the subject matter after a while I wish there had been more something there. At one point they cut off power and heat to her room and I was like....um what is this? I think I kept comparing this to authors who have written YA that I liked in the past like Sarah Dessen and Rainbow Rowell and Wunder kept coming up short.

The writing was a bit hard to get into at first. We start off with Maya who reads the Bible and tells us it's full of lies, but she also starts after a while to have a god-complex and sees herself as one and I don't know if that was the author trying to prove something or not? I think that's my whole problem with this book in a nutshell. I didn't know if some of this was intentional writing to take away something from it or not. It just felt too mish-mash.

The setting takes place in a town in Pennsylvania that felt very non-descript.

I will note that some reviewers had issues with the "feminist agenda" of the author and I did not. I was a little baffled by those comments because what? But also, I never get people thinking that current politics that are shaping the lives of a ton of teenagers right now should not be discussed in a YA fiction book. But I do agree though no teenager is running talking about the patriarchy this and the patriarchy that all of the time. Also Maya calling her parents Boomers and the townspeople Gen X had me going good grief after a while. I don't know how old Wunder is, but it's felt very much she was putting her own older thoughts/feelings into a 17 year old fictional character and it read hollow.

🎧Mysterious Ways -a standalone

✍️ By: Wendy Wunder-new to me author

🗣️ Narrator: Georgina Sadler voices all characters. The narrator's voice fit the characters with standouts from Maya and Lucy. The reading style brought the text to life, and the author and narrator worked together perfectly. The pacing and flow allowed me to get lost in the story. The narrator paused and announced new chapters and there was a table of contents which helped me follow along with the E-book and audiobook.

📃 Page Count: 332

🏃🏾‍♀️Run Time: 8:45

🗓️ Publication Date: 8-27-24 | Read: 8-27-24

🙏🏾Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press| Wednesday Books, and Macmillan Audio for this ARC and ALC ❤️! I voluntarily give my honest review, and all opinions expressed are my own.

Genre: YA, Romance

Tropes:
❤️Mental Health/Illness
❤️coming of age
❤️friendship
❤️mental health
❤️LGBTQIA+ rep
❤️magical realism
❤️Gen Z culture

⚠️ TW: h is a virgin, bullying, suicide-just mentioned

POV: multiple characters, 3rd person

💭 Summary 💭: Maya Storm-16 has a gift to read everyone's thoughts and know their darkest secrets. She has been in the psychiatric facility Whispering Pines for 6 weeks along with Bobby trying to help him. When she comes home, she starts a new school, tries to make friends, understand her gift, and get rid it. She also experiences a crush and intimacy for the first time.

Side cast: Stacy and Glenn-Maya's parents; Lucy-Maya's project partner turned friend; Bobby-goes to Maya's school and was in the mental hospital with her; Scott-Maya's old man friend, a recluse in town; Tyler-Maya's 1st crush


My Thoughts: This was a rollercoaster ride with Maya. She was smart girl who analyzed everything (sometimes ad nauseam) and tried to help people when she could. This was a lot of responsibility for her, but Maya had a good heart and didn't let the darkness take her. I worried for her attempting to help Bobby would bring her down, but that fall at the end became a catalyst for both of them to come out into the light.

Range of emotions: 😬🤔🙄
🌶️: Spice 1/5
🎧: Narration 3/5
😭: Emotion 4/5
❤️: Couple 3/5
⭐️: Rating 3.5/5

I think that this book is very powerful. I think it has beautiful representation for teens struggling with mental health, or coming to terms with things that make them different. I feel like this book is going to resonate with a lot of readers. Thank you for taking on such an important conversation and bringing it to the forefront for readers to find representation.
Thank you to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for allowing me to read and advance copy of this title.

Seventeen-year-old Maya knows everything about the people that she sees, from their private history to their thoughts and failures. Because this was so overwhelming, she was sent to the Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility. Now she is starting at a new school, and Maya meets a guy she actually likes. Is there such a thing as knowing too much?

Maya is a self-aware Gen Z teen who can hear others' thoughts, and with eye contact can zoom in and hear the more internalized thoughts and memories. She can even rearrange them, which she does to help fellow patients at Whispering Pines. She isn't sure there's much to learn from others or schools at the beginning of the book because of this ability. I'm not sure if I even liked her at that stage. As she stops taking herself quite so seriously, she begins to reach out at school to make friends, take up a cause, have a real relationship, and figure out what her telepathy actually means.

There are flashes not only of her own thoughts but that of others around her, and they're deeper than she assumes them to be. Reaching out and making connections is what was relentlessly drilled into her at the hospital and with her therapist. When she actually puts genuine effort into it, she helps effect change in their lives. It's not just rearranging thoughts, but being a presence and sounding board, being someone that others can rely on, and becoming part of something bigger than herself. The surface thoughts she hears are just parts of people, and while it can give her knowledge she doesn't want or shouldn't have, it's her own heart that helps give her purpose. That's true no matter the age of the protagonist, and hopefully, this reaches the teens who will read this book.

I liked the premise of this book, I feel like we all know someone that has skills in one area of life, but not in other parts. I admit fault in this book that I didn't realize it was YA, and the main character did come across very young. Some of her choices frustrated me and I just wasn't in the best spot to connect to those choices. This book has lots of positives to it and I loved the humor. I know this book will be well received by many and I will look for future books from this author!