Be careful what you wish for. For nearly two hundred years, the women of Clara Wishbone's family have carried the same inheritance: a wish. One wished for wealth. One wished for love. One wished for the sea. One wished for a child. Every wish came true. Every woman paid for it. Now Clara is turning fifteen in Morro Bay, a fog-draped California fishing town where her whole life fits neatly between the harbor, her sketchbook, the grandfather who raised her, and Tina-the pelican who has waited on the same dock for as long as Clara can remember. Clara likes things that stay. She has never understood why her grandfather forbids birthday candles, dandelion wishes, wishing wells, or wishbones. She has never questioned why certain animals seem to watch her too closely. And she has tried not to think about what will happen when her best friend Maren leaves for a future beyond Morro Bay. Then the impossible begins to surface. A seal watches Clara from the harbor. A moth presses against her bedroom window. An old journal appears in an oddities shop filled with the belongings of people long gone. Inside the journal is the history her family has hidden for generations. The women in Clara's bloodline do not simply die. They change. Bound to the wishes that shaped their lives, they remain near their daughters as animals-a raven, a rat, a moth, a seal, a pelican-loving, watching, and unable to leave. The curse began generations ago with betrayal, grief, and a terrible act of magic. Now Clara stands at the end of the line. The wish inside her is growing stronger. And the people she loves are already beginning to leave. To break the curse, Clara must do something no woman in her family has ever managed to do: refuse the wish, loosen her grip on the people she cannot bear to lose, and discover how to love without holding on. Beautiful Oddities is a lyrical young adult novel of magical realism about mothers and daughters, inherited grief, friendship, family secrets, and the courage required to release what we love. Because sometimes letting go is not the opposite of love. Sometimes it is the purest form of it.
