Amari and the Night Brothers - B.B. Alston

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Amari Peters knows three things.

Her big brother Quinton has gone missing.
No one will talk about it.
His mysterious job holds the secret …

So when Amari gets an invitation to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, she’s certain this is her chance to find Quinton. But first she has to get her head around the new world of the Bureau, where mermaids, aliens and magicians are real, and her roommate is a weredragon.

Amari must compete against kids who’ve known about the supernatural world their whole lives, and when each trainee is awarded a special supernatural talent, Amari is given an illegal talent – one that the Bureau views as dangerous.

With an evil magician threatening the whole supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she is the 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."

This book was nominated for a 2024 Grand Canyon Reader award, and since I book talk all the nominees with my students and have them vote, I decide that I'm going to try to read all of next year's nominees. I think this is my first nominee that I hadn't already been planning on reading, and it did not disappoint. It starts off intense - not only has Amari's brother gone missing, with no leads on what could have happened to him, but Amari is about to get her scholarship revoked and essentially be kicked out of school. Not great.

Then a stranger shows up with intriguing information, they claim from her brother. Amari agrees to accept a package from this mysterious stranger and learns that her brother was a member of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs - not just a member, in fact, but one of their best agents - and that he, along with his partner, went missing in action while investigating something top secret. Before he disappeared, Quinton sponsored Amari, so now she gets to attend the Bureau's summer program, where she can not only train as an agent just like her brother, but also investigate his disappearance. Will Amari find her missing brother? Or will she vanish along with him, leaving her mother alone? Amari isn't sure, but what she does know is that she has to try.