The book follows three best friends, Cass, Em and Lyd, as they start corresponding with three boys as part of an English exchange program between their two high schools who are too often at odds with each other. The entirety of The Year of Secret Assignments is told through letters, emails, notes, and journal entries that the characters exchange between each other. Since I had liked the first book, I was prompted to borrow another book of hers at the library and am very glad I did.

This is the second book I read by Jaclyn Moriarty after The Spell Book of Listen Taylor, which I thouroughly enjoyed and recommned. Ages 14-up.This is one of those rare YA contemporary that I read (I'm slowly reading more of them), and it happens to be written yet again by an Australian author (the preicous book was Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta).

With its colorfully camouflaged themes of regret, this well-crafted novel may strike a less resonant chord with teens than with their parents. However, Listen acts mostly as a supporting player the perspectives remain mainly those of adults, and the heavy focus on extramarital affairs has more to do with midlife crises and discontent than adolescent issues. Teens will easily relate to Listen's conflicts (intensified when her friends cast her out of their clique). Casting spells intended to achieve such feats as make a vacuum cleaner break, Listen works her way through almost half the book before she notices the tiny promise on the back cover: 'This Book Will Mend Your Broken Heart.' The results of Listen's magic deliciously spike trenchant scenes that shift among the various (adult) couples and the role of the Zing Family Secret. Meanwhile, Listen Taylor, a motherless seventh-grader who lives with her father and his girlfriend Marbie Zing, discovers a book of magic spells. The central mystery discussed every Friday night by the Zing adults, behind the closed doors of a garden shed has to do with a carefully guarded family secret that (as readers gradually learn) necessitates the constant surveillance of a young elementary-school teacher named Cath Murphy. A revised version of Moriarty's adult novel, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes (not published in the U.S.), this whimsical though rigorously plotted novel offers an intellectual puzzle that may engage YA readers, but the lengthy, adult-centered narrative may test the patience of its target audience.

The spell book of listen taylor