Scan barcode
A review by papertraildiary
Flannery by Lisa Moore
3.0
Original review posted at The Paper Trail Diary.
Flannery, a 16-year-old living in St. John’s, Newfoundland (I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a character in Newfoundland!), has a few problems. Her single mother can barely afford to pay rent or buy her a textbook, her best friend has ditched her for a new boyfriend, she has a big assignment for her entrepreneurship class due and she’s partnered with the guy she’s had a crush on since she was a kid. Tyrone is the bad boy now, but that’s not who Flannery remembers, but that’s who she’s attracted to. She still thinks of him as the vulnerable boy. Tyrone is barely at school and never shows up to help with her assignment, but she’d still drop anything to spend five minutes with the eternally stoned motorcycle dude he has become. But it was his idea for their project to come up with a business: love potions. Fake potions, they’re just like mood rings, a novelty. But then word gets out around school that the love potions work.
The book is presented to be more about Tyrone and the love potions, but I felt that it ended up being more about Flannery’s relationships in general, especially with her mom and her best friend. Both of these relationships are going through trying times and Flannery needs to see how they’re going to resolve themselves. She’s constantly angry with her mom, Miranda, for being weird and poor, and she misses her friend Amber like crazy because Amber has basically up and dumped her for a new social circle and controlling boyfriend with no warning. (The Amber storyline is the saddest – I appreciate that more books are tackling what a friend breakup can be like, as it’s something very real that people go through at all ages but don’t really talk about it.)
I thought the story itself was pretty cute and realistic; I think it’s loosely based off the author’s and her children's lives, and I quite liked Flannery as a character. She has great vocabulary – “hoofed it” and “beat it” in reference to hurrying somewhere made me giggle – and she’s a little bit clueless so you follow her as she learns. I did think that the story progressed too slowly, though. I craved a bit more action and focus. The love potion part didn’t even come in to play until after 100 pages. I was also a bit distracted by quotes not being within quotation marks (but that’s just a personal thing). Overall, it was still an enjoyable read and I treasured it even more so because it was Canadian.
(Thank you to House of Anansi / Groundwood Books for the review copy.)
Flannery, a 16-year-old living in St. John’s, Newfoundland (I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a character in Newfoundland!), has a few problems. Her single mother can barely afford to pay rent or buy her a textbook, her best friend has ditched her for a new boyfriend, she has a big assignment for her entrepreneurship class due and she’s partnered with the guy she’s had a crush on since she was a kid. Tyrone is the bad boy now, but that’s not who Flannery remembers, but that’s who she’s attracted to. She still thinks of him as the vulnerable boy. Tyrone is barely at school and never shows up to help with her assignment, but she’d still drop anything to spend five minutes with the eternally stoned motorcycle dude he has become. But it was his idea for their project to come up with a business: love potions. Fake potions, they’re just like mood rings, a novelty. But then word gets out around school that the love potions work.
The book is presented to be more about Tyrone and the love potions, but I felt that it ended up being more about Flannery’s relationships in general, especially with her mom and her best friend. Both of these relationships are going through trying times and Flannery needs to see how they’re going to resolve themselves. She’s constantly angry with her mom, Miranda, for being weird and poor, and she misses her friend Amber like crazy because Amber has basically up and dumped her for a new social circle and controlling boyfriend with no warning. (The Amber storyline is the saddest – I appreciate that more books are tackling what a friend breakup can be like, as it’s something very real that people go through at all ages but don’t really talk about it.)
I thought the story itself was pretty cute and realistic; I think it’s loosely based off the author’s and her children's lives, and I quite liked Flannery as a character. She has great vocabulary – “hoofed it” and “beat it” in reference to hurrying somewhere made me giggle – and she’s a little bit clueless so you follow her as she learns. I did think that the story progressed too slowly, though. I craved a bit more action and focus. The love potion part didn’t even come in to play until after 100 pages. I was also a bit distracted by quotes not being within quotation marks (but that’s just a personal thing). Overall, it was still an enjoyable read and I treasured it even more so because it was Canadian.
(Thank you to House of Anansi / Groundwood Books for the review copy.)