An IndieNext Pick!
“Audacious. Like much classic literature and like growing up, reading this immersive novel is all about the experience. Bookish readers will be entranced—and perhaps inspired to seek out the source text.” —The Horn Book
“Dear Reader is so real, even the magic of books is literal. It’s imaginative and exhilarating and genre-bending and one of the best YA novels of the year.” —Book Riot
“Illuminates the complex chaos of life and love, demonstrating that seemingly inconsequential choices and people can have lingering effects. The use of Wuthering Heights intensifies the impact of Flannery and Miss Sweeney's corresponding journeys; even readers who haven't read the classic will find significance in the parallels." —Publishers Weekly
“I loved Dear Reader—the wild romance of it, the joy in the language, and the celebration of the imagination that the whole book is. It’s like a book dipped in love, and I can’t think of another quite like it.“ —Alison Umminger, author of American Girls
“Dear Reader breaks the YA genre wide open. Captivating, intelligent, and the most exquisitely written of this year or any year.” —Wendy Lawless, New York Times bestselling author of Chanel Bonfire
“Imaginative, fresh, and sometimes wickedly funny, and a book with real compassion at its core. I loved everything about it.” —Laura Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone
“In a world of Apple stores and texts, can literature still be a guide to life? Mary O’Connell’s Dear Reader sends its heroine, Flannery Fields, on a daring mission to find out. Armed with a dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights and O’Connell’s intoxicating, funny, and genre-bending prose, she discovers that reading remains the key to understanding the human heart, even in modern day New York. And readers of this novel will discover an unforgettable testament to the power of imagination, friendship, and our enduring capacity for self-discovery.” —Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant
“I am broken-hearted that these characters aren't my real-life friends.” —Katrina Leno, author of The Lost & Found
Flannery Fields’s beloved AP English teacher, Miss Sweeny, is missing. Flannery gives the police the purse found at the teacher’s desk but keeps Miss Sweeny’s well-read copy of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. When Flannery discovers the book is actually a diary of Miss Sweeny’s activities, she skips school and heads to Manhattan to find her cherished teacher. Saskia Maarleveld narrates the story in two voices, Miss Sweeny’s and Flannery’s. As her diary is read aloud, Miss Sweeny provides a myriad of clues to her disappearance. Maarleveld gives her a smooth and slightly breathless voice. Flannery tells her own story, which Maarleveld delivers straightforwardly. Maarleveld also captures Flannery’s efforts to balance her concern for Miss Sweeny and her attraction to a boy who offers to help. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
2017-02-14
After her English teacher misses class at her Connecticut private school, Flannery discovers the purse she left behind, containing a newspaper obituary for Brandon, a soldier killed in action, and a copy of Wuthering Heights that, when opened, tells not Emily Brontë's story but Miss Sweeney's own.Caitlin Sweeney's nourished Flannery's passion for Wuthering Heights and her dreams of becoming a writer, encouraging her to apply to her alma mater, Columbia University. Transformed into a first-person narrative, Caitlin's book becomes Flannery's guide as she anxiously pursues Caitlin, who's desperate to unite with Brandon, her deceased first love. Following Caitlin to Manhattan, Flannery's joined by a handsome, mysterious Englishman named (of course) Heath. As they seek Caitlin, she searches for Brandon. Despite some closely observed, skillfully rendered scenes, the awkward central conceit—Brontë's novel transformed into Caitlin's real-time narrative—remains unconvincing, either as fantasy or realism, lacking the conceptual infrastructure to support belief. Caitlin's elitist, judgmental tone distances readers. Flannery echoes Caitlin's disdain for her shallow classmates and welcomes frequent interruptions from her inner editor, a virtual Miss Sweeney, questioning and ridiculing Flannery's word choices (readers may feel less forgiving). Steeped, like Flannery, in white-privileged affluence, Caitlin regrets having failed to bridge the gulf between herself and white, working-class Brandon, who rejected community college and followed her to New York—but her remorse seems less Brontë-esque tragedy than justified payback. Ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful. (Fiction. 14-17)
