Review by Ian Keogh

The cheery reading of Making Friends continues in this third volume. Some aspects have remained in place after the mistaken magical dabblings seen in Back to the Drawing Board, but Madison is now again living with Dany’s family. Dany, though, remains insecure and overly concerned with how she presents to others. Will she ever be cool?

Beyond the already strong characters of Dany and Madison, this begins a very different story, with school secondary. In the previous two Making Friends books the idea of magic is a plot device to cause complications in Dany’s life and underline that the easiest answer isn’t always the best solution. With Third Time’s a Charm Kristen Gudsnuk expands the world of magic, introducing others familiar with it, most especially Amara, daughter of a ludicrously wealthy family and protected at all times by security guards. She rapidly befriends Dany and Madison, and invites them home, where they overhear that all is not well with the family fortune.

It seems Dany’s mother hasn’t learned much from her previous magical manipulations, and is now using magical books to ensure her success as a famous novelist. We’re shown how that works, and readers of earlier books will realise that something’s quite wrong in Dany’s world when she doesn’t recognise her friends. It’s not until a third of the way through, before it’s revealed that memory alteration on a massive scale has taken place, clever storytelling until then providing enough distraction to throw readers off the scent.

Until now much about Dany’s magic has been enjoyable, but rather random, but Third Time’s a Charm pulls a lot of threads together to form a cohesive world. However, it’s the charming characters and imaginative adventure that’s the real hook, with the only problem being the way things are left at the end. They’re not quite right, so let’s hope when Together Forever arrives in 2024 Dany’s world is restored.