Will I love Tamsin?

There were a lot of contenders for the last spot on this list, but I’ll go with this engrossing magic realism work by Peter Beagle. 

This book is about Jenny, an American girl whose mother remarries and moves them to a manor farm in Dorset, in the English countryside. Jenny is a modern teenager thrown into the context of a Victorian ghost story; soon, she meets the titular character, a teenage ghost who has blocked out how she died. The world-building and mythology are wonderful, introducing the audience and Jenny to Tamsin’s experiences in life and to the other ghosts… show more.

Mr. Cat is a ride-or-die. Mr. Cat walks the line that all cats do in the real world, in that he doesn’t actually have magic powers and he can’t actually talk, he is at the end of the day a little animal that lives in Jenny’s house, but also he would bite a ghost without hesitation. It’s Peter S. Beagle’s complete mastery of voice and tone that enable Jenny and Mr. Cat to walk that line so effortlessly. Because the fantastical is grounded so deeply in the real world, the stakes feel so high that I first read this book… show more.