"The Burning Tree" by Helen Dent

It's a tree... THAT'S ON FIYAHHHHHH!

Actually, the Burning Tree is not, in fact, on fire. |Yet.| What it does do is randomly curse people for no apparent reason, until it kicks off the plot by sending the main character's sister into a coma. (This is apparently the first time it's done this to someone.) To try to reverse this, the main character, Ellie Caster, |sets it on fire in an attempt to get rid of it. Unfortunately, this just makes everything worse|.

This one is magical realism more than anything. It's not played scary enough to be horror, and the magic isn't understood enough in-universe to be urban fantasy. Those three (magical realism, urban fantasy, and horror) are sort of the trifecta of "modern setting but it has magic".

Anyway, the book is set in a small town inhabited mainly by three huge extended families: the Casters, the Levys, and the Finches. The Casters and the Levys super hate each other, and the Finches are just kind of there. Unfortunately for Ellie Caster's blood pressure, she has to work with her nemesis Charlotte Levy when the Burning Tree starts causing problems. And also a guy named Curtis Finch, the cousin of Drew Finch, Ellie's crush (who has a crush on Charlotte, not Ellie, causing even more drama).

It's engaging enough to make me stay interested throughout the whole thing, and its main plot twist was twisty enough that I didn't see it coming. Which are my favorite type of plot twists. It's possible that I've just read so much middle-grade fiction that based on the blurb and the first few chapters I can throw several general roadmaps out into the ether, and one of them usually broadly matches the plot of the book.

When I can't do that (like with this book, which is actually YA, not middle-grade), or when there's an out-of-nowhere plot twist, is when I get pleasantly surprised. (Or unpleasantly, as with things like "turns out the love interest is secretly the main villain").

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fight scenes. I'd play a videogame of it, though I'm pretty sure players on their second or third (or eighth, or ninety-second) playthroughs would use their metaknowledge to try to sequence break (going to places and doing things before they'd happen if you play the story normally). I think it would be hard to stop that while still maintaining verisimilitude, but it's probably possible.

4 stars.

(Endnote: As far as I can tell, Helen Dent is no relation to Arthur Dent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame.)