Listening for Lucca
By Suzanne Lafleur
I would strongly recommend the book Listening for Lucca by Suzanne Lafleur. The story will leave you on the end of your seat. To be honest I couldn’t put it down and that doesn’t happen very often. A girl tries to fix history to change her future.
The book is about a girl, Siena, who never was able to make friends with her quirky personality and stubborn attitude. Her little brother, Lucca, doesn’t talk for some reason and it has been like this for more than a year. Then Siena’s parents decide to move to a house on the coast of Maine.
Siena has very strange vivid dreams and visions and the house they move to has been in her visions before. Then she finds a pen that magically writes a story in the most perfect handwriting Siena has ever seen. Siena reads as the pen makes her hand go in all directions to make a story. The story is about a girl and her brother who lived in that house many years ago. The story makes you think you have gotten it figured out, until it throws you in a whole different direction.
The story the pen writes is about a normal family during the Vietnam war. Her older brother is “drafted”.(Even though he secretly volunteers to prove he is as brave as his friends.) Once he leaves everyone is quiet and the young girl starts to hang out with her older cousin. Her older cousin has been doing lots of bad things like stealing. Sarah,the little girl, almost got her in trouble a few times. So her cousin tricked her into not talking using a magic key. Her cousin said if she wanted her brother to come back she must not talk because there was a poster that said "Loose Lips Sinks Ships." Sarah didn't want her brother to be on one of those ships. Siena also saw her Sarah's brother's life too. He tried to save a very sick little girl by taking her to the hospital. The sick girl died and got the brother sick and he stopped seeing faces.
I really like how relatable the main character is. She different and a little strange, but everyone is a little weird at times. I really like how Siena always called herself the “weird girl.” To me I think she could fit in but she does little things that scare people away, like how she paints her nails a really dark purple. She sporty and seems really nice. She’s also really shy, and I’m sometimes shy when I meet new people too though.
My favorite part is how Siena collects lost things. She will go completely out of her way to pick up another abandoned item. At the beginning she said, “I’m obsessed with abandoned things, unwanted things, forgotten things.” Then at the end she does something you won’t believe. If I were you I wouldn’t pass up this book.
Something that makes this book different from the others is how there are multiple stories that overlap. Siena’s life with some of her dreams, and the story the magic pen writes to help Lucca speak again. She needs to somehow go into all the stories to change their past to fix the outcome.
There were a few things that seemed a little unbelieveable. Sometimes she would see people and other thought she was crazy. Overall I was impressed though. Somehow the author kept my attention the whole time. The book was different from anything I’ve read, but different isn’t bad. I think that everyone should get a chance to read this book. I think you would be impressed too.
Let’s put it this way if you want mystery, drama, comedy and lots of twists, then read Listening for Lucca by Suzanne Lafleur.I would strongly recommend the book Listening for Lucca by Suzanne Lafleur.