ENCHANTED STORIES: Surprise Lily

By Sharelle Byar Moranville

Holiday House, 2019. Fiction. 231 pages.

Spunky ten-year-old Rose Lovell loves her life on the farm in Illinois with Ama, who is both her grandmother and best friend. She likes to bake, loves spending time with her calf Peanutbutter, and still gets nervous about school presentations. But the predictability of her quiet life alters dramatically when her long-absent mother walks in the back door of the farmhouse kitchen one summer afternoon. Rose soon learns that the pain and difficulty of change can lead to the most beautiful surprises.

Moranville has crafted a unique and exquisite female-centric story that encompasses multiple generations of the Lovell family's life on the farm, a format rarely seen in middle grade novels. A simple family tree is used throughout the story and is corrected as family secrets are revealed. This book is likely best suited for older children, as it does broach more mature topics such as mental illness, teen pregnancy, and single parenthood, but all are addressed in an age-appropriate manner. I may have originally picked up this book for the gorgeous cover, but what I found inside was a story even more beautiful than the art gracing it's exterior.

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