A Tangle of Knots, by Lisa Graff

In this MG magical realism tale, most everybody has a Talent. It might be something useful and endearing, like Cady's talent, which is being able to look at a person and know what his or her perfect cake is, and then perfectly bake that cake. It might be something odd, like the ability to lick a hundred envelopes in eight seconds, or quite in keeping with what's expected of a boy who considers himself worthless, such as spitting with the accuracy of a sharp-shooter. Then there are those who don't have a talent, or haven't found it, who are called Fair, such as Marigold, who spends all her time trying one harebrained scheme after another in an attempt to find her Talent.

The book is itself a tangle of knots, and hard to summarize. It's about connections. It's about near-misses, and in that way reminds me of Lynne Rae Perkins's Criss-Cross. It's about a lot of disparate people and puzzle pieces coming together in the end, and in that way it reminds me of The Westing Game. I also think of it a bit as "The Penderwicks meets Savvy."

I saw a fair number of the plot twists coming; ditto which characters would turn out to be related and how. There are a lot of POV shifts, and at one point near the middle of the book I felt like I'd had one too many. But I cared about Cady, Zane, Marigold, and others, and wanted to find out how a dinosaur bone, a lost peanut butter recipe, a hot air balloon, an author who'd lost all verbal ability, a man in a gray suit with knots in his pockets, a place called The Lost Luggage Emporium, and more, would all come together. This novel, which is up for the National Book Award, is a fascinating puzzle that shows how a lot of different people and separate stories can converge at one moment in time.