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Love Aubrey
Love Aubrey is a 2009 children’s Fiction, written by Suzanne Lafleur as her first book, and published by Penguin Books. The book aims to tell the story of an 11-year-old girl, Aubrey, and her journey through grief and abandonment as her father and sister lose their lives to a car accident and her mother shortly after, barely coping with the grief, leaves Aubrey to fend for herself. The book has been nominated for several awards, including Waterstones Children's Book Prize (2010) and Goodreads Choice Awards for children’s books (2009). The book also achieved a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on the Waterstones website, with one of the reviewers describing the book as ‘amazingly brilliant’

Background
Lafleur believes that fiction comes from ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and comments that the start for Love Aubrey was more of an impulse than an actual idea, with the first draft taking 11 months to write. Lafleur says she knew that Aubrey was going to be alone, and she knew that Someone named Savannah was going to be missing, so she continued to write the book in order to find out why, she says she had an impulse to find out Aubrey’s story rather than an idea to use it as a writing guide.

Lafleur has confirmed that she will not be writing a sequel to Love Aubrey. With her reasoning being that she likes where the story ends, and she wanted to leave room for the readers imagination to run wild when imagining Aubrey’s future, meaning every reader can imagine Aubrey having gone down the path they believe she was meant to.

Plot
Love Aubrey travels through the swift changes of Aubrey’s lifestyle as she goes from living alone, after her father and sister passing and her mother grief-stricken leaves her, to then living with her grandmother in Vermont, starting over at a new school and building up new friendships.

After the passing of her father and sister, Aubrey’s mother struggles to cope with the emotions she is left with, walking out on Aubrey. After doing so Aubrey makes the challenging decision to live alone and look after herself, we see the attempt she makes to keep up the unassuming impression that her mother is still caring for her, in order to avoid the social services getting involved and taking her away. Aubrey and her mother kept in contact with the local ladies from church in order to portray this, followed by Aubrey trying to keep out of sight when buying her groceries, with what little money she had, buying just the necessity’s including fish food for her only companion Sammy.

Aubrey’s plan didn’t last long when her gram visited questioning where her mother was, Aubrey attempts to pass off the questions with lies stating her mother was going to be back for dinner after she was finished running errands however Aubrey’s gram did not give up easily and waited for hours until the realisation hit that Aubrey’s mother was not going to return.

Soon after Aubrey’s gran made the decision that she would take her home with her, and what started as a quick decision led to a completely fresh start for Aubrey.

Aubrey soon settled into life in Vermont with the only downside being the addition of chores into day-to-day life. Aubrey soon settled into a new school and built up a new and strong friendship with her next-door neighbour, Bridget. Sharing the same age and the same concept of fun.

Aubrey’s new life that she has learned to love is soon to change for what may be the better or the worse when she is faced with a big decision, after her mother gets back in contact and attempts to fix broken bonds with Aubrey, to bring her back home.

Aubrey
Aubrey is the main character, an 11-year-old girl, in which the story bases around, as she gives us an insight into her journey through grief and loss. We see Aubrey grow and heal from her hurt as she starts over, building new friends and a new life in Vermont with her grandmother.

Gram
Aubrey’s grandmother comes into the book when she visits Aubrey and notices she is alone and her mother is nowhere to be found, after hours of waiting Aubrey’s grandmother realises that her mother is not coming back and decides to take Aubrey home with her, where she takes care of Aubrey and guides her through her journey to heal from all the previous events that had scarred Aubrey.

Lizzie
Lizzie is Aubrey’s mother who abandons her when she struggles to cope with the grief of losing her husband and youngest daughter in the car accident. Aubrey’s mother makes an appearance towards the end of the book when she gets on to the right path by attending therapy sessions and getting a new job, pushing her to try and rekindle her relationship with Aubrey.

Bridget
Bridget makes her first appearance in the book when Aubrey moves to Vermont to stay with her grandmother. Aubrey watches Bridget as she plays, whilst outside doing the chores her grandmother had given her. Aubrey and Bridget became introduced the next day when Aubery was outside, again doing chores, and attempted to make conversation. Bridget introduced Aubrey to her little sister Mabel before they began to chat about a scar that Aubrey pointed out on Bridget's head, which lead to them visiting the tree where it happened, the start of their friendship.

Author
Suzanne Lafleur, aged 39, was born in New York City and grew up just outside Boston in Newton, Massachusetts. Lafleur knew she loved writing from a young age when she would spend most of her free time, in the school holidays, not just reading multiple books a day but also writing plays for her siblings and neighbours to act in; on top of filling notebooks with novels.

LaFleur began to pursue her dream to write novels when she studied English and European History in a collage in Lexington, Massachusetts, before she then went on to study writing for children in grad school, The New School, in New York. This is where she began to write what was her first published novel, Love Aubrey.

Since then, Lafleur worked at The Anderson School, a public school for gifted children and Lafleur now has her own website where she posts all current books, fun facts, writing tips and answers all FAQs. Most questions that Lafleur answers are based on the books such as ‘will there be a sequel’ or ‘where did you get the idea’. However, Lafleur also answers questions more personal to her life, such as what it is like where she lives and her daily routines, allowing people to take a look inside her day-to-day life outside of the books.

Genre and Style
Love Aubrey fits into the genre of children fiction, being written from a first-person perspective.

Lafleur says she wrote Love Aubrey for children in hopes it 'may offer strength to children who are suffering from a loss of their own'.

Lafleur has 6 books all of which also fit into the same genere of children's fiction. Including Eight keys, Listening for Luca, Beautiful World, Threads of Blue and Counting to Perfect.

Translations
Love Aubrey has been translated into 7 different languages, for more to enjoy!

Including:

Duch by Van Goor

German by Cecilie Dressler Verlag

Indonesian by Penerbit Matahati

Japanese by Tokuma Shoten

Korean by Random House Korea, Seoul

Swedish by B. Wahlstrom's

Ukrainian by Old Lion