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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2016, 256 pages
Paperback:
May 2019, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Bradley Sides
Buy This Book
Written in Lisa Moore's exuberant and inimitable style, Flannery is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, empowering and harrowing often all on the same page. It is a novel whose spell no reader will be able to resist.
Sixteen-year-old Flannery Malone has it bad. She's been in love with Tyrone O'Rourke since the days she still believed in Santa Claus. But Tyrone has grown from a dorky kid into an outlaw graffiti artist, the rebel-with-a-cause of Flannery's dreams, literally too cool for school.
Which is a problem, since he and Flannery are partners for the entrepreneurship class that she needs to graduate. And Tyrone's vanishing act may have darker causes than she realizes.
Tyrone isn't Flannery's only problem. Her mother, Miranda, can't pay the heating bills, let alone buy Flannery's biology book. Her little brother, Felix, is careening out of control. And her best-friend-since-forever, Amber, has fallen for a guy who is making her forget all about the things she's always cared most about - Flannery included - leading Amber down a dark and dangerous path of her own.
When Flannery decides to make a love potion for her entrepreneurship project, rumors that it actually works go viral, and she suddenly has a hot commodity on her hands. But a series of shattering events makes her realize that real-life love is far more potent - and potentially damaging - than any fairy-tale prescription.
1
I'm walking up Long's Hill, hoofing it because I am about to be late for school. Again.
If you're late for school you get an automated phone call. A fake-human voice, faux-friendly and regular-guy-sounding, calls to rat you out.
A child in your household named — and when it says "named," the voice changes. A completely different voice inserts your name right into Regular Guy's sentence.
And the second voice is very disappointed in you. The second voice sounds all blamey and sad and rumbling like a clap of thunder. The voice says FLANNERY.
Yesterday was the third phone call since I started grade twelve, a mere two weeks ago.
I'm always the one to answer the phone. Miranda, my mother, never answers the phone. She hates the phone.
Then I have to write myself a note and forge Miranda's signature because if she does it, she'll write a manifesto about how she doesn't believe in punctuality. She believes punctuality promotes conformity, and high...
Moore's handling of dialogue is simple, yet effective. These are real voices, speaking in situations that are purely authentic. Young adult readers, especially those who struggle to remain above the fray in their own relationships, will find comfort in the quiet successes found within the pages of Flannery. Flannery says about herself, "I am a person who likes to feel awe." So am I, and I felt it when I finished Moore's wonderfully moving novel...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Bradley Sides).
What if love could be grasped with a single sip?
The idea isn't too absurd. Lisa Moore's YA novel Flannery tells the story of Flannery, a sixteen-year-old girl, who decides to see if she, along with her classmate and crush Tyrone, can create love potions for her entrepreneurship class. While planning, she concocts the idea of making four distinct mixtures – one blue, one red, one orange, and one green. Each drink provides a different intensity of love, from eternal love to "securing a prom date" kind of love. The drinks are nothing more than colored water, but she gets surprising results. People start to believe, and, as Flannery puts it, "even [after] a little tiny bit, the potions start to work. They work instantly."
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