Excerpt from HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST CHARM by Lillie Vale
Kiara Mistry is—in a word—gorgeous. In two, devastatingly gorgeous.
What’s left of my frazzled mind promptly scrambles. Because Kiara is giving me that vexingly dimpled smile that could level a city, and she has Devon Lake on her arm. The same boy whose shoulder I tapped in AP Chem last week to borrow a sheet of notepaper and promptly lost my heart to.
Which brings me to the next thing Kiara is: an obstacle.
I grit my teeth, thankful for the same gauzy swathes of fabric I was cursing a minute ago. Now they shield me from view in the back of the tent while the visitors in front are still brightly spotlighted. Not only is Kiara the last person I want to see, but the inside of a psychic’s tent is not a place I want to be caught. But it’s just like Prior’s End to direct its capricious, fickle magic my way, using a generous sprinkling of what the whole town calls occasional magic.
Because I definitely don’t believe in occasional magic. Or sometimes-if-you-squint-sideways-real-hard magic. Or magic at all. Not really. Not anymore. I simply can’t. Because then that would mean—
No, I can’t allow myself to think about that.
Before, things like toadstool fairy rings in the woods enchanted me. My dad’s gentle warning not to mess with nature, to leave things be, that stepping into a circle was considered as unlucky as destroying it. He knew a man who mowed one down in his front yard who was then plagued by a host of other household pests until he finally moved out. Spiders coursing across ceilings in black waves, his vegetable patch torn apart with an unexplainable animosity, birds hitting his roof thud-thud-thud in the middle of the night, already dead. You never had to look far for the warnings in his stories.
Dad kept so many tales like that tucked away in his back pocket, pulling them out to share with me whenever he took me for a walk in his cherished woods. I was enthralled with the occasional magic then. Before. How could I not be when he could spin stories with so much wonder and whimsy, cobwebbed with just enough creepiness to appeal to a child’s imagination? Especially a child raised by him, spoon-fed wonderment until it spilled out of her. Before.
I don’t think I know how to leave things alone anymore.
Everything is tarnished now.
Everything. Including me.
“I told you that you didn’t have to come in with me,” Kiara mutters, half frowning at her companion.
Devon frowns, too. “Why shouldn’t I? I don’t have any secrets from you.”
Kiara blinks. Her brown eyes are soft and honeyed in the glow of the tent. Hypnotic. “It’s only our first date. You should. That’s . . . weird.”
“That’s commitment. You’ll see, babe. I’m the guy in your future.”
Ha! Good luck with all that unfounded confidence, dude. You’re not the guy for her. I just barely hold back a snort. Which is to say, I absolutely snort then smother it with fake cough.
Kiara cocks her head, long brown hair spilling over a shoulder. For one horrible moment, it’s almost as if she has X-ray vision and knows exactly who is hidden behind all this gaudy frippery.
Every single muscle in my body tenses. My heart slingshots into my throat. Panic sweat gathers under my breasts as though my temperature just went up a few degrees. I cast a furtive look around.
Please, please, please don’t recognize me. Not here of all places.
Kiara tucks one of her face-framing apricot locks behind her ear. Her earrings glimmer as they catch the light. “I’d like to know what’s in my future,” she says.
Devon chuckles and puts his arm around her shoulder, looking preemptively proud of himself.
I roll my eyes. Puh-leese. You wish it was you.
Kiara shrugs him off with an impatient sound, wringing her hands like there’s a real question she wants the answer to but doesn’t want to ask in front of him.
Like always, Prior’s End does its thing, screwing up my plans and putting me at the mercy of a girl who’s used to doing the exact same thing. Just like she’s doing right here and now with yet another person who I liked first. And just like the others, Crush #4 is totally oblivious to the fact.
It’s the Kiara Effect. It’s how she is. Not even on purpose. No sooner do I start to crush on someone than they fall for her first. She just has to look at someone for them to fall head over heels for her.
Literally. One smile from her lips sent a boy tripping last year—several girlfriends later, he still hasn’t lived it down. And his eyes still trail after Kiara whenever she enters or exits a classroom, which I would find completely pathetic, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m kinda maybe sorta guilty of the same thing.
Love her or hate her, it’s impossible not to be one of Kiara’s conquests.
Hating her would be the easy option. Oh, I pretend, of course. Pretend to hate that hopeful, heart-stopping smile. The way Kiara fills the room like she’s the only person in it.
How nothing negative ever seems to touch her, not even autumn’s sharp teeth. She never dresses for the weather, as though something as mundane as garden-variety cold wouldn’t dare. Those enviably long bare legs that strut down our high school hallways like she owns them are now neatly tucked into ankle boots.
“Of course,” I announce, striving to maintain Aurora’s lower, breathier voice. It comes out more sexy than mysterious, but I valiantly keep going, inching toward the back flap and a quick getaway. “Why don’t you sit down at the table and think good thoughts while I . . . stay here . . . to better get in touch with . . . um . . . the future . . . which will only work if you’re there and I’m here, okay?”
“Are you sure she’s legit?” Devon whispers, moving his chair closer to Kiara’s. “She sounds kinda spacey. Or drunk. And she didn’t even take our tickets.”
I bristle but keep my eyes on the prize. A few more feet, and I’m outta here with no one any the wiser. Devon is superfluous and so far in my rearview he’s a pinprick. Or maybe just a prick.
I’m already over him.
“Shhh!” Kiara hisses. “Don’t be rude. Madame Aurora is getting in the zone. She’s so talented, it’s no wonder she’s a little eccentric. I promise you, she’s the real deal. There’s something I need her to tell me, and you are not getting us kicked out.”
I actually freeze midstep. Kiara is adamant—surprisingly fierce—voice teetering right into threatening territory. Huh. That’s . . . new. She’s never sounded so unlike herself. All this time, hidden steel under that sweetness and sunshine. I find myself leaning forward, drawn in like a moth.
With a grumpy hmph, Devon crosses his arms. My tense shoulders relax a fraction, but they immediately hike back up again. Kiara believes in the paranormal about as much as everyone else in Prior’s End, but her insistence on knowing this mysterious something?
Reluctant intrigue makes me falter when I reach the flap. Ducking out right now would be so easy. I could do it in a heartbeat. But then I wouldn’t discover what Kiara wants to know so badly.
And for some reason, that makes me want to know it, too. Maybe because I didn’t get what I wanted in coming here, the petty victory of embarrassing Aurora and making her back off Mom. Maybe because I’m tired of losing to Kiara and pathetically need to know something important to her that she wouldn’t want me to know. My breath comes out in short controlled bursts. I’m unable to leave it alone.
I dig deep, all the way down to the pit in my stomach that’s writhing with snakes, and summon a deep breath, fortifying myself for what I’m going to do next.
“I will happily give you what you deserve,” I announce. Something electric goes through me, something I’ve only felt once before. Confidence strums my body, the next words already perched on my tongue. My mouth isn’t dry anymore. “Place both hands on the crystal ball and close your eyes.”
Copyright © 2025 by Lillie Vale.
The occasionally magic, always superstitious town of Prior’s End is famous for three things:
Whimsical charm at the annual Fall Festival.
The legend of the wishing well hidden in a forest bristling with secrets.
And Nova Marwood’s missing hiker father.
Every year without him, it gets easier to pretend Nova doesn’t believe in myth and magic. Easier to pretend she’s doing okay. Easier to pretend she doesn’t have a secret crush on the girl she fake-hates.
Kiara Mistry is the luckiest girl in town and the thief of every crush Nova had her heart set on first. In theory, Nova should resent Kiara. But it’s getting harder to deny her feelings.
When Nova lays an unintended hex on Kiara at the Fall Festival, and one misfortune after another swiftly follows, soon Kiara’s very survival is at stake. To reverse the bad luck, Kiara’s exes turned BFFs commence a quest for the miraculous wishing well. There’s only one person who can get them there . . . Nova.
But to save Kiara—and maybe find her dad, too—she’ll have to believe in something much stronger than magic. Nova will need to believe in herself.
Young Adult Romance | Young Adult Paranormal [Penguin Young Readers Group, On Sale: July 15, 2025, Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593623916 / eISBN: 9780593623909]
Lillie Vale is the young adult author of ALA's 2020 Rainbow Books List selection Small Town Hearts and Beauty and the Besharam (forthcoming from Viking Children’s). She writes about girls fighting back, secret-keeping and between-places, the ways in which we’re haunted, food as a love language, and all the feels. Born in Mumbai, she grew up in Mississippi, Texas, and North Dakota, and now lives in an Indiana college town where the corn whispers and the woods creep. Vale graduated with an MBA and now holds her dream job as a professional world builder and (sometimes) ship sinker. Loves a good monster metaphor. Always dreaming of crumbling ivy-covered castles and going back to the seaside. Her debut adult romantic comedy, The Shaadi Set-Up, releases in 2021.
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