The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

Sparrow is 15 and is going into tenth grade at a new high school. She also has six older sisters. She is also the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.

Her mother, sisters, etc. are psychics and mediums, and they all expect her to be too. She hides the fact that she, too, has considerable powers. She also has three ghosts that serve as spirit guides, and one of them tells her she has four psychic abilities and is quite gifted.

Of course, ghosts being around all the time, wanting you to help them, can be a drain on a person, especially when they just want to get some sleep. The spirit guides want her to be a medium, and she doesn't want to be one. She doesn't want anyone else knowing she can see spirits, either.

It's a situation that would have kept up expect for one ghost, Luke, who really wanted Sparrow to do something for him. Sparrow is stubborn. Luke is stubborn. It's the “immovable object” and “irresistible force” thing, and it goes on for a while in a delightful manner.

Luke has something that he needs Sparrow to do for him. It's something that can help Luke move on to the “other side” and that also help his brother, but, to help him, Sparrow would have to reveal her abilities. Doing that could cost her all her friends, even brand her as a freak at school. As it turns out, doing that could even cost Sparrow her life.

This is an absolutely wonderful book; one of the kind that you want to just keep reading and reading until you're done. It's based on Lilydale, the center for Spiritualism, mediums, readings, and other spiritual matters. It concerns people who have real abilities to contact those who have passed on (or, at least claim to have those abilities, as skeptics would say). This story, though, deals with someone who has abilities but doesn't want to use them and thus expose herself to ridicule and social isolation.

The story also has a wonderful sense of humor in it. In addition, it really has a nice romantic theme to it, too. This is just a really great, wonderful read, one of the best young adult novels I have read.

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