The Key to the Extraordinary by Natalie Lloyd

Emma Pearl Casey has lived at her family’s cemetery in the magically haunted town of Blackbird Hollow her entire life. However, when money starts to run short and her grandma can’t afford to keep the cemetery running, she’s forced to sell it off to Warren Steele, a shady businessman in the local area. However, Emma knows of a treasure hidden deep within Blackbird Hollow, and finding it would almost certainly mean that the cemetery would be saved. But it undoubtedly won’t be easy to find this mysterious treasure. Many have tried, yet none have succeeded. Emma Pearl, however, knows she’ll be able to do it. It’s her destiny to find the treasure. She, like all the women that came before her, have all had dreams about their destiny, and Emma’s? She saw a key. A key that has to be the key to solve all their problems, right?

Emma knows that she’ll never be able to find the treasure in the spooky town of Blackbird Hollow without having people to help, so she recruits her best friend Cody Belle and Earl Chance, a boy who returned to the town after being traumatized so badly that he won’t talk anymore. Together, they venture through the haunted town, following the song of the Conductor, a civil-war era ghost, hoping, praying, needing, to find the treasure.

The Key to the Extraordinary by Natalie Lloyd is one of the quirkiest and most unique books I have ever read. With a wonderfully original plot, a cast of weird and likable characters, and a motif of magical flowers all throughout the story, this is undoubtedly one of the best books I have read all week.