CARMEN'S CRYSTAL BALL: Star Sisterz, Book 7
by Linda Johns
Mirrorstone/Wizards of the Coast
ISBN-10: 0786940298
ISBN-13: 9780786940295
Ages 8-12
144 pages

Carmen Bernstein has always loved animals. Indeed, she has an almost supernatural way with them. She urges her dog telepathically to jump up on the couch, and the next thing you know, there he is beside her. Or what about the time she got kids to check dog books out of the library just by thinking about them? So when she finds a crystal ball in her attic, she can't help but wonder if she's meant to become a pet psychic.

With the help of her best friend Brooklyn and her stepbrother Sam, Carmen ventures out to find animals that will respond to her psychic overtures. She has...well, not so much luck. But Carmen does end up meeting Keegan, a student at her school who raises greyhounds and, oh by the way, is super hot.

When Carmen is assigned an article for the school paper, Find the Identity of the Mobile Blogger, she knows she's in trouble. The Mobile Blogger is a sharp, witty commentator on all the ins and outs at Middleton High; more to the point, the Mobile Blogger is Carmen Bernstein! Desperate to keep her identity a secret, Carmen scrambles to come up with another story idea. Researching the Internet, she finds a number of blogs by students interested in dogs --- some of them, like Keegan, want to raise dogs while others are obsessed with the cruel sport of dog racing. Dog blogs make a good story, but unveiling the truth about greyhound racing promises a better one --- even though the research will be a little more frightening and dangerous. Is Carmen up to the challenge?

CARMEN'S CRYSTAL BALL is another sweet, zesty story in the Star Sisterz series. Readers will be happy for the update on the heroine of CARMEN DIVES IN and pleased to see that she gets a little romance of her own. Carmen's relationships with her family are believable, if a little less fraught with tension, in this book, and her interactions with her friends are both fun and revealing.

The plot does meander a bit. It starts out centered on Carmen's aspirations for pet psychic stardom and switches midway through to focus on greyhound racing. The shift in tone is a bit disconcerting --- the psychic aspect is slightly goofy, while the racing is dead serious --- and the author never seems to reach any conclusions about the psychic storyline; Carmen just forgets about it when she gets caught up in other things. While this was believable, it also disappointed me a bit; the pet psychic episodes were hilarious and some of my favorite parts of the book.

Still, CARMEN'S CRYSTAL BALL is a fun read, and followers of the series will look forward to the next adventure.

   --- Reviewed by Paula Jolin

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