The Spell Book of Listen Taylor

The Spell Book of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty

Release Date: September 1st, 2007
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 464
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The Zing family lives in a world of misguided spell books, singular poetry, and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. They use these things to protect the Zing Family Secret -- one so huge it draws the family to the garden shed for meetings every Friday night.

Into their world comes socially isolated middle grader Listen Taylor, whose father is dating a Zing. Enter Cath Murphy, a young teacher at the elementary school that Cassie Zing attends, suffering from a broken heart. How will the worlds of these two young woman connect? Only the reader can know!

I bought this book a couple months ago when the title of it caught my eye. My first thought that it was some book about witches, even the cover can give that suggestion. However, it was not about witches like Harry Potter was. It was completely different, and yet I was not disappointed.

The characters are completely relatable. I found myself knowing exactly how Listen was feeling as she dealt with the issues of losing friendship of girls she had been friends with her entire life. It was also comforting to watch her overcome the challenges put forth by the book. The other character Cath, helped add a little more purpose to the plot through the added mystery of how she relates to the Zings and Listen’s world.

This book was a fast read. It was fun and lively and it was cool how everything just came together in the end. Definitely a good book.
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