The Great Unexpected

By: Sharon Creech

Narrated by: Heather O'Neill, Erin Moon

From Newbery Medal winner and bestselling author Sharon Creech comes a grand, sweeping yarn that is a celebration of the great and unexpected gifts of love, friendship, and forgiveness. With a starred review from Kirkus Reviews calling it an ""enchanting tale to treasure,"" The Great Unexpected captures the heart and the imagination.

Humorous and heartfelt, this is a story of pairs—of young Naomi and Lizzie, both orphans in present-day Blackbird Tree, USA, and of Sybil and Nula, grown-up sisters from faraway Rook's Orchard, Ireland, who have become estranged.

Young Naomi Deane is brimming with curiosity and her best friend, Lizzie Scatterding, could talk the ears off a cornfield. Naomi has a knack for being around when trouble happens. She knows all the peculiar people in town—like Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins. But then, one day, a boy drops out of a tree. Just like that. A strangely charming Finn boy. And then the Dingle Dangle man appears, asking all kinds of questions. Curious surprises are revealed—three locked trunks, a pair of rooks, a crooked bridge, and that boy—and soon Naomi and Lizzie find their lives changed forever.

As two worlds are woven together, Creech reveals that hearts can be mended and that there is indeed a gossamer thread that connects us all.

Adolescent Fairy Tale

Any additional comments?

Naomi and Lizzie are two orphan girls living in a small American town with many albeit distant connections to Ireland. One day boy called Finn falls out of a tree practically onto Naomi’s head, and this begins the magical mystery. Who is “this Finn boy” and who is the Dingle Dangle man who has been seen around town, and what do they have to do with the orphan girls? The girls’ story is told alternating with a tale of others who live across the ocean in the old country, and, of course, they are somehow all connected.

The Great Unexpected reads like a modern Irish fairy tale; if you enjoy fairy tales, or realistic fantasy you might also like: A Dog For Life, by L.S. Matthews or My Name is Mina and I Love the Night, by David Almond.

This book is AMAZING

It has the best characters and I love how both of the story’s in the book bound together and pull into one of the most spectacular books I’ve ever read!!! You must read this❤️❤️🥳

I would love to write more but I don’t wanna give any spoilers😬😳🤫

Not our favorite Creech book.

This is a story with potential, and there were positives, but the ending was frustrating.