Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. Sugaring Off was not one of my favorite reads. While the atmosphere was well constructed, the characters and plot were lacking. The details about sugaring were impressive, but the main conflict didn't happen until 90% of the book was done.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me free access to the digital advanced copy of this book.

Owl was such a great character. She was nuanced and guarded and broken - but not because of her hearing impairment. Seeing how she interacted with the world was the real story I wanted to read about. I wanted to read more about her adapting to the world that hurt her, not having to deal with the casual misogyny of the hired worker. The discussion of sugaring - while interesting - just dragged on and bogged down the plot for me. Not my cup of tea, this one, but it has the potential. Owl is such a beautiful character.

As with probably everybody who read this, I was immediately taken in by the cover of this novel. Seriously, so beautiful, and I feel like it accurately conveys the atmosphere of the novel. We get a lot of representation - a Deaf MC, Indigenous side characters, adoption/foster family.

I thought the novel was very mature in handling things like trauma inflicted from family, heritage, found family, and all the typical themes of adolescence, losing friends, figuring out who you are. Owl is prickly and a little closed off, which I like from a main character. Devoted to the forest and her sugaring work.

I COULD have liked her thing with Cody - it had elements that were strong, moments of vulnerability - but ultimately I don't like Cody as a person and found the switch of their romance WAY too fast. Despite being a rather slow novel, this is way too fast. The resolution with their relationship is more interesting and different from typical YA so it redeems it a little, but we could have spent more time in the middle.

Additionally, the novel dragged in a lot of places, spending way too much time on looks and sugaring and those moments than the actual plot. We don't really get to the thriller part until the last... 85% of the novel?? And by then it's too late. The narrative style is very stream-of-consciousness which doesn't help with that.

Overall, an interesting little novel - I would check out more from this author.

I want to start off by saying that a “thrilling dash of mystery” is completely misleading in my honest opinion. I kept waiting for some mystery/some thrill, but it wasn’t there because that’s not the type of book this is. If I had to categorize it, it would be a dark YA contemporary. It’s not light, fuzzy, and fun. It deals with heavy stuff—drug use, abuse, neglect—and the consequences that come with it. It’s emotionally charged. So, if you ignore that part of the description, I think your expectations will be waaaaaay different.

Personally, I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s slow, but not in a bad way. It unfolds in waves as we learn more about Owl, Cody, and their battles. I LOVED the deaf rep—I don’t think I’ve encountered it in YA yet. There was also A LOT of Indigenous rep!

This book tugs at the heartstrings. It shows the consequences of child abuse, unfiltered. It discusses the brokenness of systems (rehab, foster care, etc.). Lastly, it forces the reader to think about families and their roles in how resilient we can become. This book isn’t for the faint of heart.

MINOR SPOILER: this book doesn’t end with a “happily ever after.” It follows the pattern of real life: sometimes, we don’t get closure. We hurt. We have pain. We struggle to let go. We are influenced by our circumstances. It doesn’t end with a bright red bow at the end. Rather, it ends with the promise of something more, depending on how we decide to move forward.

I think you’ll enjoy this book if you enjoy contemporary books dealing with heavy topics like “You’d Be Home by Now” or even the popular “13 Reasons Why”. I’m also going to throw out there that fans of The Firekeeper’s Daughter might enjoy this one as well.

Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin Young Readers for this eARC! My review is live on Goodreads & Amazon. I will post my review to Bookstagram the week of 1/2/23.

Owl lives with her aunt and uncle since her father is in prison. They live in a very small rural town and run a maple syrup farm. They have always run the farm on their own so Owl is unhappy to learn that her uncle has hired a boy just a bit older than her to help out this year. They soon warm up to each other and develop a bond. The question is whether he is good for her. In addition to the romance, Owl is trying to decide if she wants to respond to her father’s attempts to communicate and learn how to best utilize the help from her ASL teacher at school.

This is a beautifully atmospheric book, perfect for Autumn/Winter vibes. It's also a deeply felt narrative of trauma, familial history, and rural struggles, so it's not all cozy vibes by any means. French's writing is incredibly evocative, though, and remains so throughout the novel.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for this e-ARC.

The first thing that drew me in was the stunning cover. I mean just look at it, it's gorgeous!
The disability representation was such a nice and welcome surprise (Owl, the main character is deaf).
After reading it, I can definitely say that this book is just as pretty and unique on the inside as it is on the outside.
This book deals with heavy topics such as childhood trauma and physical abuse, so you should definitely check the triggers before reading it.
Set on maple syrup farm, this book gave off such a fall book vibe for me. The description of nature is really beautiful and it almost feels like you're right there with the characters.
The pace of the book was kind of slow sometimes but I didn't mind it, for me it was the perfect pace for this story.

Sugaring Off was beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measure. I was immediately drawn in to Owl's story and I loved all the different kinds of representation we got in this book.

This book was so interesting in the way it depicted deafness and the maple industry. The elements of the small town in a mountain where everyone knows everyone really set the scene for this novel. I really liked how our MC had actual conversations with people that were though provoking and showed the characters growth. This book is very slow in the beginning but the set up helps showcase the slow life of small towns and how one change can be a lot.

The cover is why I wanted to read this one. I didn't care what it was about. I just needed to read it because man this cover is so gorgeous!! Pacing and romance of this one was slower than I normally read. But I think for this story it worked out well. I liked how it slowly unfolded and we learned the truth about a light mystery and was really just along for the ride.

I would like to thank #Netgalley for letting me read an eArc of #SugaringOff by #GilliianFrench.

This book was not at all what I expected. Have to be honest I loved the cover so I wanted to read the book and I am very happy that I did.
Owl lives in the woods with her Aunt and Uncle on their maple sugar farm where she has lived most of her life after being removed from her fathers care. After a horrific accident that involved her father Owl ends up in the ICU with most of her hearing gone. She has to learn to live without an essential piece of herself but struggles with learning sign language. Living in the woods she has taken to the wildlife that surrounds her including a den of foxes on the property. One morning while going to visit the foxes she notices a stranger traipsing through her woods. Not knowing who it is she calls to them that they are on private property and need to leave. The young man she ends up speaking to is the grandson of her uncles friend who has come to help with the sugaring on the farm. They start off badly right away because he scares her intentionally and she just doesn't take well to others being in her space.
As time moves on she is forced to work closer with Cody due to the fact that her Uncle is having health problems and can't help as often. Owl is forced out of her comfort zone and has to confront moving passed her boundaries to take a hard look at her friendships and the position she has allowed herself to always be in. Spending time with Cody brings out a new side of Owl but its a side her Aunt and Uncle aren't used too. Owl herself is trying to understand where she now stands with herself.
Filled with the wonder of nature, and self discovery this novel takes you on a journey.

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

Actual rating: 3.5

Please look up content warnings for this work.

Gillian French presents Sugaring Off, a coming-of-age story in an isolated town with a main character whose partial Deafness has isolated her further. Owl is half in the world of the hearing and half in the world of the Deaf, with no real community to be found in either. Her aunt and uncle took her in after the injury that sent her father to jail and caused her hearing loss. Owl helps run the maple syrup production with her uncle, but a new hire throws the whole town off balance. Cody is fleeing from something, but finds connection with Owl. When there is a murder discovered, Owl really has to consider what she values most.

I cannot speak to the quality of representation of Deafness shown in Owl's character, but I can say that Owl is much more than her disability. Owl is absolutely a fully formed character whose interpretation of the world and the people in it are handled with nuance impacted by her experiences. Cody, in a separate manner, is also very clearly the product of his own experiences. I think that overall the character work done by French in this novel is an asset to the novel itself as is the atmosphere French built. The setting, to me, was one of the best parts about the novel and was a brilliant evocation of the autumn to fall transition.

Where this novel falls a bit short is in the pacing. The beginning of the book is slow. The build of the setting, the characters, introducing Cody and building the relationship between Cody and Owl is all very slow. The "dash of mystery" is truly just that. Barely there and the conflict that Cody brings is raised and over within the last 15% ish of the book. This felt rushed and unnecessary as the entirety of the book up until that point had really been build without that threat and had been riding on the strength of the character interactions rather than any specific plot.

While the summary suggested that Cody and Owl's families wanted them to be apart, that really wasn't evident in the writing beyond the concerns any families might have about an inexperienced girl and known delinquent (older) boy developing feelings for one another. This is not a star-crossed lovers trope and readers should not be seeking that here.

I'm slightly concerned that there is potential that the book has been mismarketed between the "mystery" and implicated "forbidden romance" both of which really are not strong aspects of the novel.

Overall. I enjoyed my time with Sugaring Off, and would be happy to read more from this author in the future.

This is a work of art. I loved everything about this book, not only the cover is immaculate but the story itself is gorgeous and the writing made me gasp a few times. I recommend this book with my eyes closed.

Positives:
-This books had a great atmosphere. It felt like you were in the woods with the characters
-I enjoyed the character dynamics.

Negatives:
-The plot was a bit slow going. I wanted the mystery/thriller element to develop earlier.

This unfortunately was a miss for me. I wanted to love it so badly, but the pacing was incredibly slow for my taste. I felt like I was halfway through the book before anything mildly interesting happened. It felt like a chore to read. Because of that, I feel like I can’t rate it any higher than 3 stars. However, I do think books like this are incredibly important in terms of representation. I’ve never read a book before with a deaf protagonist and it was interesting to see the word through Owl’s eyes and unique perspective. I just wish the plotting had been better paced.

I have complicated feelings about this book.
To be clear, I really did love it, and there was a lot in it that I could personally relate to. I really felt seen. That's why I can't critique the whole thing too harshly.
In the end though, the story leaned too heavily into tragedy and unnecessary violence. The premise of the book is great. The writing is beautiful and I will still recommend it for so many reasons. But I didn't want to finish this book feeling sad about how it ended. I was really banking on a story with an MC living with a disability to end on a more hopeful note, because too many of these stories just don't want these characters to be happy and I hoped this wouldn't be one of them.
Owl did grow from beginning to end, her story is worth telling. It's not poorly written or anything like that. It's just not a story for me I guess, and that's OK. I'm giving it a high rating because it is a story featuring a character with a disability that isn't all about her disability, and also, foxes. I LOVE foxes.

Once I picked this us, opened it and started to read, I absolutely couldn’t stop. I read this in a matter of hours, fully immersed in this smaller than small town lifestyle, similar to one that I’ve known.

After a tragedy where she was hurt by her father, the person who was supposed to care for her most, Owl is left mostly deaf, and under the new care of her aunt and uncle. Now 17, she knows the ins and outs of the family sugar maple farm.

Her uncle hires a boy not much older than she is to help him tend to the whole of making the syrup and Owl is taken aback. She sees him as an outsider, but soon, he begins to see her for who she is. The bond they form is strong… until his past begins to encroach, leaving Owl shell shocked and reeling.

I LOVED everything about this book. I loved the deaf representation, something I haven’t seen much in the literature I have read. I loved Owl’s perseverance and her incredible strength (even when it sometimes borders on stubbornness). I really enjoyed the day in the life kind of situation we see of life on a maple farm. I also really enjoyed the Native American heritage that is spoken about. It gave this sense of strong bonds that have so much history.

Most of all I loved them way this book plays out. I loved the ending, which I won’t go into as to not spoil it. The choices Owl has to make… the path she takes is strong and wise and I loved her (and the author) for it.

I have complicated thoughts about this book. On one hand, I loved the writing and the entire feel of the book. The setting was beautiful and the way Owl grew throughout the story was wonderful. On the other, I felt a tiny bit cheated. The reason being that the thriller part of the book didn’t pick up until about 70% of the way into the story.

I wish we had more time. Another few pages to get more of an explanation. The ending felt a bit abrupt but I’m proud of how far Owl has come by the end of the story.

Once the thriller aspect of the story started, the tension building was great. The scenes came quick and intense, just like they should. I was on the edge of my seat reading them!

I was a wee bit disappointed in Aida, I wish there had been something about that relationship at the end of the story.

This was gorgeous, a perfect mix of all things I like in books and art in general. The characters especially stole my heart, I got attached to them and was sad to say goodbye to them at the end. This is probably intended for young adults and will mostly appeal to this type of audience.