The Spell Book of Listen Taylor
A fairytale, a mystery, a history of hot-air ballooning, and a romance . . . A novel so brilliant, moving, zingy -- and Zingy -- that it could only have come from Jaclyn Moriarty.The Zing family lives in a world of misguided spell books, singular poetry, and state-of-the-art surveillance...
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A fairytale, a mystery, a history of hot-air ballooning, and a romance . . . A novel so brilliant, moving, zingy -- and Zingy -- that it could only have come from Jaclyn Moriarty.The Zing family lives in a world of misguided spell books, singular poetry, and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. They use these things to protect the Zing Family Secret -- one so huge it draws the family to the garden shed for meetings every Friday night. Into their world comes socially isolated middle grader Listen Taylor, whose father is dating a Zing. Enter Cath Murphy, a young teacher at the elementary school that Cassie Zing attends, suffering from a broken heart. How will the worlds of these two young woman connect? Only the reader can know!
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780439846783 (0439846781)
Publish date: September 1st 2007
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Pages no: 479
Edition language: English
Category:
Fantasy,
Young Adult,
Magic,
Teen,
Novels,
Humor,
Adult,
Mystery,
Contemporary,
Womens Fiction,
Chick Lit
Full review here on TotalTeenFictionThis book tells the story of several characters - Listen and her dad, her dad's new girlfriend Marbie, Marbie's sister Fancy and her daughter Cassie, and Cassie's schoolteacher Cath. Listen's story focusses on her starting year 7 and the ups and downs that brings....
I was expecting YA fantasy but got something closer to chick-lit: a bunch of related women's points of view and thoughts (mostly about relationships). I enjoyed Moriarty's writing, which is often original and funny, but was bothered by other facets of the book, such as the omnipresence of infidelity...
Inspite of Jaclyn Moriarty's funky, insightful and sometimes extremely funny writing style, "The Spell Book of Listen Taylor" is in essence a rather depressing book: It tells the cleverly intertwined stories of three women having each an affair and one 12-years-old girl - the one and only Alissa "Li...
Updated review, 06/2012:OK I still really, really love this book. I mean, it's a little twee and cloying in places. As a stylistic choice it didn't turn me off, but I get that this is a book you either immediately love or hate. So many italics and !'s. And the characters all have personalities that,...