The backstory: Joel Dotrice was arrested ten years ago for fracturing his daughter's skull when she was seven years old. Imagine this - he threw her down the stairs. On purpose. Partially deaf ever since, Rochelle "Owl" Dotrice has lived with her uncle and his wife. They own a maple sugaring farm in the mountains of northern New Hampshire and life seems pretty routine...until the Dotrice family gets notice that dad has made parole and Seth hires a teen named Cody to help with the sugaring.
Whether French was intentional or not, in the beginning of Sugaring Off I felt the story of Owl moved slowly, like cold sap moving through the trunk of a maple tree. As the story heated up, like sap to syrup, it began to flow faster with more flavor and intensity. Having said that, I am not a fan of overly dramatic descriptions of characters or plots. I feel they are ploys to get the reader crack open the book. The inside cover of Sugaring Off describes Cody as "magnetic and dangerous." Spoiler alert! For the first two thirds of the book Cody is a sullen and silent cigarette-smoking teen who wants nothing more than to stay away from adults and maybe take Owl's virginity. Oh yeah, she's attracted to him, too. The real threat seemed to be daddy making parole. Would he come back for revenge? It was Owl's testimony that put him away.
As an aside, I understand why the parole of Owl's father was pivotal to the plot, but I felt it was unnecessary trickery in the face of Cody's mystique. More could have been done to build up Cody's "dangerous" character because Seth's outrage about Owl's relationship with the teen was misplaced. If Seth thought Cody was such a threat, why did he let Owl work so closely with him? What happened to big bad dad? He drifted out of the story as more of Cody's dark past was revealed. This was written for teens and so I thought like a teen and questioned everything. ( )

I discovered this book at work while marking up books that had been withdrawn for low circulation. I was intrigued because of the setting in northern NH in maple sugaring country. The story focuses on 17 year old"Owl" who lives with her aunt and uncle on their sugarbush farm. Owl has come to them after a childhood trauma left her partially deaf and parentless. She has a stable, loving family in her aunt and uncle, who adopted her as a child. She loves her home, nature, and the maple sugaring business. Into this setting comes Cody, a young man hired to help with getting the trees tapped and syrup made and bottled, since Owl's uncle is nursing a bad knee in need of replacement. Cody has had his own traumas, but has that bad boy appeal, and Owl falls for him. The story moves pretty slowly for the first two-thirds, and then Cody's problems (that he has brought on himself) catch up with him. In addition, her Dad, who caused Owl's original trauma, is out of jail and wants to see her again, adding to the tension and drama.

Good story, probably appeal to teens living in rural areas who can relate to the setting and to the characters. ( )

This is a slow moving story about Owl, a partially deaf seventeen year old that experiences first love with a stranger who comes to help with the tapping the maple trees for sap (sugaring). Owl lives with her aunt and uncle because her deafness was caused by her father who was incarcerated for his abuse but is soon to be released and wants to see his daughter. So many emotions Owl has to deal with in this coming of age story. No real mysteries at all. Still, an interesting read. Enjoyed the vivid imagery of the New England landscape. ( )

Left partially deaf by an early childhood tragedy that ended in her father’s incarceration, seventeen-year-old Owl is now a tracker, an explorer, a wildlife enthusiast, and always her freest self while hiking the steep forested acres surrounding her aunt and uncle’s maple sugar farm, now her home. Owl and her aunt and uncle never speak of the brutal attack that brought her to them. On the day she confronts a stranger trespassing among the maples, Owl’s sheltered existence is blown wide open by Cody—the magnetic, dangerous young man hired to help with the sugaring off. Cody seems to see her, the real her, in a way no one else does. Together, they challenge each other, learn to question their preconceptions, and risk a romance their families are desperate to stop.

But when Owl learns that some part of Cody is compelled toward self-destruction, she must make a difficult decision about their relationship at the same time she’s grappling with her father’s recent release from prison. And when a seemingly motiveless local murder draws attention to Cody, Owl realizes that Cody is in far more serious trouble than anyone knows—and it’s followed him to her mountain. ( )

Sugaring Off will evoke feelings and memories for a lot of teens living in northern New England. While set in New Hampshire, the situations here could as easily take place in much of rural Maine. When she was very young, Owl survived a terrible assault by her dad, one that left her with severe hearing impairment as well as physical scars. She's spent most of her life with her aunt and uncle who adopted her. Her mother vanished very early on and hasn't been heard from since.
There are several plot elements that wind together to make this a most interesting story. There's the sugar maple operation that provides most of the family income, there's Cody, nearly eighteen who has his own demons and has come to live with his hard-edged grandfather. He's been hired by Owl's adoptive father to help with this year's sugaring because of a knee injured in war that's been further damaged by a poorly performed surgery. There's Owl's sensitivity to where she is on the hearing impairment spectrum, as well as her slowly eroding friendship with Aida who lives in a semi-unrealistic world of her own.
All of these come together to create a scary finale that nearly costs Owl her life. They result in her changing in ways she never could have foreseen at the start of the story. It's satisfying in that somewhat grim way that real life often is. ( )