Flannery

In her first novel for young readers, Canadian author Lisa Moore (February) introduces a feisty, practical heroine readers will love from the first page.

Flannery Malone has known Tyrone O'Rourke her entire 16 years of life, and loved him for at least six of them. When she and Tyrone are partnered for the competitive Entrepreneurial Fair, her heart says, "Boom. Boom, boom," but Tyrone cuts class, stands her up, and leaves her to do all of the work while he spraypaints gorgeous but illegal graffiti murals. Flannery's love is "a whirling dervish doing a Riverdance in my heart, patent leather shoes beating out a rhythm that goes Tyrone, Tyrone, Tyrone" and the ache of it propels the novel, told partly in flashbacks and occasionally breathtaking bursts of stream-of-consciousness prose-poetry. Ironically, Tyrone's entrepreneurial idea for their team is to sell a love potion, "a gag... [l]ike canned fog."

So Tyrone is checked out; Flannery's "best friend since sippy cups" Amber is suddenly too absorbed in her controlling boyfriend to support her; and her artistic, free-spirited single mother, Miranda, spends their welfare money on a video helicopter drone for her six-year-old half-brother instead of on her biology textbook... or the heating bill for the bitter Newfoundland winter. Already isolated and overwhelmed, Flannery also has to endure a horrific bullying incident.

Older teens will identify closely with brave, vulnerable Flannery in her witty, edgy coming-of-age narrative. Good guys and bad boys populate this realistic, funny slice of life, but its heart lies in the idea that we all cope with heartaches, hopefully with the help of each other. --Jaclyn Fulwood, lead librarian at Del City Public Library, Oklahoma