The Magic of Someday Soon

Two lonely tweens resolve to help make both their dreams come true in this lyrical, lightly magical novel. All her life, now-12-year-old Zoe has traveled with her widowed artist mother, but she has few memories of her father, who died when she was four. In Maravel, Fla., Teddy, also 12, yearns to preserve what’s left of her great-grandparents’ prehistoric theme park, Fossil Gardens. Posing as a city council member, Teddy reaches out to Zoe’s mom via email, commissioning the artist to restore Fossil Gardens’s two surviving statues. Hopeful that visiting her father’s hometown will help jog her memories of him, Zoe, pretending to be her mom, accepts Teddy’s invitation. Though Zoe is quickly found out by her mother, car troubles force the duo to settle down for an extended stay in Maravel, where Zoe meets both her paternal grandmother Dee and her inadvertent coconspirator Teddy. Across the girls’ rousing alternating third-person POVs—enlivened by evocative imagery that renders a bustling Floridian setting—Lee (Between the Lighthouse and You) delves deep into themes of family, grief, and home. Main characters read as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Taylor Martindale Kean, Full Circle Literary. (Mar.)