Flavors by Emily Sue Harvey

Flavors
By Emily Sue Harvey
Publisher: The Story Plant, 2011
115 pages, paperback
Date Finished: 20/3/2011
Genres: Young Adult, Coming of Age, Realistic Fiction

In Flavors, this master storyteller of the human heart sweeps us along with twelve-year-old Sadie Ann Melton as she enters a life-altering season. The summer of 1950 will change everything for her. For in that summer, she will embark on an odyssey at once heartbreakingly tender and crushingly brutal. At times, she will experience more darkness than she has ever witnessed before. At others, she will thrill to lightness and joy she never imagined. By summer’s end, the Melton women in Sadie’s journey &ndash loving her, coaxing her, and commanding her &ndash will help shape her into the woman she becomes. And they will expose Sadie to all of the flavors of life as she savors the world that she brings into being.
~from goodreads.com~

~First Line: "Today, lounging here in my easy chair, eyes closed, with television tuned to Sirius 40s and 50s Pop hits, I listen to a familiar old song by the Nat King Cole Trio."
~Last Line: "It gave me. . . . Me."

Review: This novella was really more interesting that I initially thought it would be. I'm really glad that I agreed to participate in the Flavors book tour.

The main character, Sadie Ann Melton, and her little brother stay with their grandmother for the summer. Sadie has so many aunts and uncles it's crazy (but a fun challenge trying to remember them all). She is only a few years younger than some of them! They were all super-engaging, though, with their differentiating characteristics and looks, and behaviors.

Grandma Melton, above all, was the most absorbing charrie. The men in her family come first. She was bitter towards Sadie for some time before she actually started looking out for her. However, you could never stop loving her; even if she never said "I love you" or anything of that sort, she stil wished nothing but the best for you. She cared, even if you didn't think so.

Sadie Ann Melton. The name makes me remember so many moments that were told from sadie's  perspective. Miss Melton experiences everything for beginning the next stage in puberty ti losing a dear friend, or, in this case, a dear uncle. *tear, tear*

But anyway, Flavors was a spectacular novella. Everyone should take a chance to indulge themselves in its 115 pages. Through thick and thin, good and bad, Sadie Ann Melton's free-roaming spirit and mind are a great wonder to the reader's brain :)



Quotes from the Book:

"Youth is like spring. An over praised season." ~Samuel Butler

"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tradegy." ~Alfred Noth Whithead

"And then the day came, when risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anias Nin

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Be sure to stop by tomorrow for my interview with Emily Sue Harvey! :D