A girl with the ability to read minds tries to improve the lives of other teens in Mysterious Ways, an offbeat speculative YA novel from author and bookseller Wendy Wunder (The Probability of Miracles).
Since birth, 17-year-old Maya has been able to hear other peoples' thoughts. With one glance she can know a stranger's deepest secrets, dreams, fears, or desires. This knowledge is a burden that weighs heavily on Maya's psyche. After a stint at Whispering Pines psychiatric facility following the "the incident"--when Maya "jump[ed] fully clothed, into the pool" during a swim meet to avoid her fellow students' negative thoughts--strawberry-blonde, "milk white"-skinned Maya transfers to a new high school. She plans to lie low until graduation and "become a Normal Teenager™." Maya doesn't anticipate befriending bold and creative Korean American Lucy or developing a crush on olive-skinned, "self-proclaimed quasi-Buddhist" Tyler. These new relationships inspire Maya to use her powers to help her classmates--she resolves to "cure them of their insecurities, which would make them kinder, and thus save the actual world."
Maya's singular narrative voice is the highlight of the novel. She is self-aware and irreverent, with frequent detours into wry asides about an eclectic range of topics including the Bible, circuses, and Reaganomics. Wunder adeptly transitions between witty humor and heavy moments that convey the frightening ramifications of Maya's abilities. And many teens will relate to Maya's anxiety and exhaustion: her omniscience recalls the unprecedented insight into other people's lives we all experience through social media. The novel's imaginative combination of extraordinary powers grounded by everyday teenage turmoil should appeal to fans of both speculative and contemporary fiction. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer