YA Review – Technically Magic
Barneck, J. Abram. Technically Magic. 2026.
Book Categories – YA Review – review of books for teens
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Summary
If you were a dad who had the tech, wouldn’t you make your son a superhero?
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To everyone he doesn’t trust, Rich only speaks in numbers. “One” means hello. “Two” means a second hello on the same day. For most, that’s all they ever hear.
Rich only trusts his mom, his once-best friend Ally, the Ono family, and his therapist, Shrink Carrol—though, should he?
Elko, Nevada may be a quiet town, but his father’s laboratory hides in the nearby desert with its ground-breaking nanotech. Could it also hold the secrets to his father’s death? Or was it murder?
When nefarious military contractors come looking for that technology, they find that only the son, sixteen-year-old Rich can retrieve it. To protect those he loves, Rich must solve the clues his father left or suffer the consequences—elimination of himself and his family and friends.
Can Rich, with the help of Ally and Mai Ono, uncover the code that will save his family and friends?
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A STEM Contemporary Fiction Story
Purchase Technically Magic on Amazon – https://amzn.to/4gfCgWy
My YA Review
Believing that every child deserves to see themselves in the books they read, I wholeheartedly jumped into Technically Magic, where the main character appears to be on the autism spectrum, though that diagnosis is not mentioned. It is eventually mentioned that his speech issues started following a traumatic experience.
Barneck understands math and teens who are math geniuses. The book is quite long. Barneck alternates between the fiction story and nonfiction chapters about math concepts mentioned in the book.
Most of the time, Rich does not speak in sentences; he speaks in numbers. Only when he knows a person well does he use words and sentences. Because of this, he does not have many friends. Readers don’t discover it until later in the book, but there are people from his father’s company who are behind the events that happen in Rich’s life. The plot contains mystery, intrigue, and a wide range of personal emotions. The plot includes violence, so I would recommend the book only to more mature teens.
Other than the violence, there is nothing that would prevent Technically Magic from being added to a K-12 Christian school library. I would label it for high school only. Librarians should read the book themselves to determine its appropriateness for their audience.
I received a complimentary copy of Technically Magic. This is my honest review.
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