The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney
Author:
Genres: Children's Books, Teen & Young Adult
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Children's Books, Teen & Young Adult
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviewed by Candace Cunard for TeensReadToo.com
For Sparrow Delaney, having to switch schools before starting tenth grade isn't a curse--it's a blessing. All her life she's wanted to be normal, and now that she's found a chance to start over, she's not about to let anything ruin it. But it's hard to live a normal life when your sisters, mother, and grandmother are all mediums, in contact with the spirit world, and when you live in Lily Dale, New York, a town devoted to spiritualism where séances are regular activities and everyone you meet has some affinity for the dead. It only gets harder when you hear the dead, too.
As the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Sparrow is an exceptionally powerful medium. She's been seeing ghosts since she was five years old, and she knows her talents far surpass those of anyone else she's met. But Sparrow has always wanted more from life than being a medium, so from a young age, she's hidden her gifts, pretending that she cannot communicate with the dead at all. She sees her move to a new school as a chance to finally break away from the teasing that's always followed her, and the first step in becoming someone who has no need for annoying spirits who refuse to Move On.
Unfortunately for Sparrow, the spirits don't care too much about what she wants. On the first day of school, the spirit of a teen named Luke appears to her and urges her to help him solve the problems that are keeping him from Moving On. Sparrow ignores him at first, but Luke is more persistent than the other ghosts she's shrugged off over the years, and eventually she finds herself grudgingly listening to his story. Sparrow also has to deal with a history project partner, Will, who decides they should focus their local history report on Lily Dale and "those psychic quacks" who live there. Not to mention the continued worrying of her mother, grandmother, and sisters about her apparent lack of talents.
I came into this story less than thrilled by the premise, but I was quickly won over by Sparrow's first-person voice as she articulated all of the difficulties of being a teenage medium trying to hide her talents. The author does a good job of painting realistic--albeit quirky--relationships between Sparrow and her family members and new-found friends. The intricacies of her interactions with Luke and Will kept me wanting to know more about all of the characters involved. Even readers put off by the story's fantastic premise will be sucked into the drama of Sparrow's life and fly through the plot's twists and turns until they reach what I felt was a very satisfying conclusion.
For Sparrow Delaney, having to switch schools before starting tenth grade isn't a curse--it's a blessing. All her life she's wanted to be normal, and now that she's found a chance to start over, she's not about to let anything ruin it. But it's hard to live a normal life when your sisters, mother, and grandmother are all mediums, in contact with the spirit world, and when you live in Lily Dale, New York, a town devoted to spiritualism where séances are regular activities and everyone you meet has some affinity for the dead. It only gets harder when you hear the dead, too.
As the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Sparrow is an exceptionally powerful medium. She's been seeing ghosts since she was five years old, and she knows her talents far surpass those of anyone else she's met. But Sparrow has always wanted more from life than being a medium, so from a young age, she's hidden her gifts, pretending that she cannot communicate with the dead at all. She sees her move to a new school as a chance to finally break away from the teasing that's always followed her, and the first step in becoming someone who has no need for annoying spirits who refuse to Move On.
Unfortunately for Sparrow, the spirits don't care too much about what she wants. On the first day of school, the spirit of a teen named Luke appears to her and urges her to help him solve the problems that are keeping him from Moving On. Sparrow ignores him at first, but Luke is more persistent than the other ghosts she's shrugged off over the years, and eventually she finds herself grudgingly listening to his story. Sparrow also has to deal with a history project partner, Will, who decides they should focus their local history report on Lily Dale and "those psychic quacks" who live there. Not to mention the continued worrying of her mother, grandmother, and sisters about her apparent lack of talents.
I came into this story less than thrilled by the premise, but I was quickly won over by Sparrow's first-person voice as she articulated all of the difficulties of being a teenage medium trying to hide her talents. The author does a good job of painting realistic--albeit quirky--relationships between Sparrow and her family members and new-found friends. The intricacies of her interactions with Luke and Will kept me wanting to know more about all of the characters involved. Even readers put off by the story's fantastic premise will be sucked into the drama of Sparrow's life and fly through the plot's twists and turns until they reach what I felt was a very satisfying conclusion.
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