The Great Unexpected

Twigs, leaves, nuts, acorns, and even small branches are all very ordinary things to fall out of trees, but when Naomi Deane was taking a walk one summer evening, something quite out of the ordinary fell on her from a tree, a boy.

The Great Unexpected  by Sharon Creech is a fictional book told by Naomi Deane as she and her best friend Lizzie Scatterding; two orphans living in Blackbird Tree, face a summer of surprises. While across the ocean in Ireland, an old woman plots revenge on a man who broke her and her sister’s relationship and hearts long ago.

During their summer of unexpectedness the girls face tragedy, triumph, and everything in between. First they meet Finn, the unusually enchanting boy who fell out of the tree and captured both their hearts almost immediately. Soon after, a man named Mr. Dingle arrives asking innumerable questions.Throughout the summer Naomi and Lizzie are tasked with community service, helping the community’s “unfortunate souls” which turns out to be much more important than expected. Then about halfway through the summer, tragedy strikes and when all seems lost, Nula ( Joe’s wife and Naomi’s other guardian), Naomi, and Lizzie are asked to go to Ireland to attend the funeral and fulfill the will of Nula’s now dead sister.

This book is a page turner that is nearly impossible to put down. Sharon Creech did an excellent job showing not telling, which allows the reader the figure everything out for themselves. Also Creech organized the book in a way that in the first half of the book the reader mostly accumulated information and the first several chapters were almost like an elongated introduction. The latter half of the book seemed to be written around the reader making connections based on what they learned earlier especially in the final couple of chapters. The Great Unexpected is a book I would recommend to someone who wants something impossible to put down.