Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
Vera Sedge is one of those women
that life is constantly throwing curveballs.
Just as she thinks she has things together, something else always falls
apart. She tries to raise money by shady
methods, like collecting for charities but really collecting for her family, but
she doesn’t have the spine or the wherewithal to be particularly
successful. Then one day she sees the stream
of young evacuees from the Blitz in London go by and decides to take in the
limping boy no one else wanted. Noel is not
really lame or simple as Vera supposed, his leg just acts up if he walks too
much and he is unbelievably smart. Noel
is still grieving over the illness and death of his beloved elderly godmother
Mattie but the challenge of making Vera’s collections work be more profitable
is enough to put a spark back in the boy’s eyes. Will Vera and Noel survive the war and their
own bad intentions? Will this odd pair
create a new family?
There should be a reference to this
book and the character Noel next to the work precocious in the dictionary. He is always the smartest person in the room,
even though he is a few years shy of puberty.
He knows it, his foster mother knows it, but the dynamic works really
well. Even though these two are usually
up to no good, they are likable and while their actions are wrong their hearts
are (usually) in the right place. A very
different perspective and look at life in the “countryside” during the bombings
in London.
