Asp of Ascension: A Nefertari Hughes Mystery

Gr 9 Up—Nothing is going right for Nefertari Hughes: her mother is dead, she's become disabled, and she's been forced to move to the United States for high school so her dad can take a job with a museum. When the teen discovers that the archaeological treasure her mother died for is more then it seems, she has to rely on the friends she never wanted to uncover its power. The school conflicts featured in the early chapters are cribbed directly from Mean Girls, complete with a white girl from Africa being mystified by the behavior of her American peers. While themes like these are fertile ground, they need a defter hand than displayed here. The mystery is slightly flat, with several big reveals very early on and then a long slog where there is little for readers to find to try to unravel the clues before the protagonist. Finally, the book falls into the problematic trope of providing a mystical cure for the main character's disability. Once Terry puts on the Asp, she is no longer disabled, erasing an underrepresented population and reducing disability to a plot device.