Amari and the Night Brothers #1 Blog Tour + Review

Quinton Peters was the golden boy of the Rosewood low-income housing projects, receiving full scholarship offers to two different Ivy League schools. When he mysteriously goes missing, his little sister, 13-year-old Amari Peters, can’t understand why it’s not a bigger deal. Why isn’t his story all over the news? And why do the police automatically assume he was into something illegal?

Then Amari discovers a ticking briefcase in her brother’s old closet. A briefcase meant for her eyes only. There was far more to Quinton, it seems, than she ever knew. He’s left her a nomination for a summer tryout at the secretive Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Amari is certain the answer to finding out what happened to him lies somewhere inside, if only she can get her head around the idea of mermaids, dwarves, yetis and magicians all being real things, something she has to instantly confront when she is given a weredragon as a roommate.

Amari must compete against some of the nation’s wealthiest kids—who’ve known about the supernatural world their whole lives and are able to easily answer questions like which two Great Beasts reside in the Atlantic Ocean and how old is Merlin? Just getting around the Bureau is a lesson alone for Amari with signs like ‘Department of Hidden Places this way, or is it?’ If that all wasn’t enough, every Bureau trainee has a talent enhanced to supernatural levels to help them do their jobs – but Amari is given an illegal ability. As if she needed something else to make her stand out.

With an evil magican threatening the whole supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she is an enemy, Amari has never felt more alone. But if she doesn’t pass the three tryouts, she may never find out what happened to Quinton. 

Whenever I read books about kids going to a magic school, I never felt like they were perfect for me. I could get swept up into the world, but I never quite felt like it was real or like I was there. There often were black characters at the school, but oftentimes they were either a sidekick to the main character or they were random characters that got maybe 3 pages worth of dialogue in the entire series. This year, I tried to make an effort to read books featuring more black main characters, to see if I felt a difference in connection with a character of color in magical/fantasy settings. This is one of those books where the difference was so vivid, I wanted to cry.

I could relate to Amari in so many ways. Although she knew her brother hadn’t gotten into any illegal activities when he went missing, law enforcement wasn’t willing to do much. I haven’t had any family members that I know of go missing this way, but I have heard of it happening in our community so often that I am sure many readers can relate to this. The part that I can relate to most were all the charity case comments that Amari faced daily. Even though she had proved that she was worthy of getting into the school, she was constantly bullied and ridiculed by students as if she didn’t deserve to be there as much as the students who paid. When she left her boarding school for the magical summer camp, she was still treated as if she wasn’t good enough since she wasn’t a member of one of the “old” families in the school. Technically her brother had invited her so her family had been involved in the society, but she was still too “new” for the old families to accept her. I know how it feels to be treated as if you are only in a situation as a charity case and not because of the actual merits of your work, and it really sucks. Amari is a character that lets teens know that they are not alone if they have felt this way before and that it is okay to feel angry when placed in these situations.

The world that this story creates is simply magical. The contrast between Amari’s neighborhood where people are struggling and the camp full of affluent teens from a hidden section of the world is stark and intriguing. I wanted to find out more about the battle between the magicians and the other supernatural beings of this universe, and I hope to find out more about it in future books. I look at this book as more of being a brief intro to the world, as so much drama was going on that we didn’t get the chance to explore it properly. We should be able to learn more about the entire world in future novels, and I personally can’t wait to read more about Amari. 

This book flows so smoothly from one chapter to the next that I wanted to finish the entire book in one night. I couldn’t because I had to go to work early the next morning. Instead, I read the book on the train on the way to work, and finished it before I went to sleep that night. It was that good that I just could not put it down, and I don’t think you’ll be able to put it down either. 

I would recommend this novel to anyone looking for a new YA or upper middle-grade fantasy novel to read, especially if they are looking for a fantasy novel featuring a black main character with a very relatable story. 

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review. 

Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 books.