Every Sparrow Falling

by Shirley-Anne McMillan

'Be nice to the majority of people and they won't bother you much. Don't get too involved. Have a laugh but keep your distance.'

These are the words 16-year-old Cariad lives by. She's just been placed in yet another foster home, this time with an elderly Christian couple in a small town off the coast of Northern Ireland.

Cariad knows how to play this game. She'll toe the line just enough that her new foster parents don't ask what she gets up to when the sun goes down, just enough that they leave her alone. It's easier that way.

But when a boy at school disappears - presumed dead - and no one seems to care, it really bothers her. Then one night out walking on the clifftops, she sees him and he asks her to keep his secret.

Don't get too involved. Have a laugh but keep your distance. These are the words Cariad has lived by . . . until now.

Genres: LGBT, Young Adult, Contemporary

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2019

About the author

Shirley-Anne McMillan was born in 1975 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. She has studied at Queen’s University, Belfast and Manchester Metropolitan University. Shirley-Anne writes stories for children and young adults, and she has written and performed with Belfast-based arts collective, Ikon, for several years. She lives in South Down where she spends her time as a writer and schools worker.

Reviews

[Schizanthus Nerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family doesn’t exist, I told myself. Not for people like me, anyway.

Cari has spent her life being bounced from one foster home to the next, never staying in one place long enough for any to feel like family. Now sixteen, her latest placement is with Dawn and Jacky, an elderly couple from Ballybaile, Northern Ireland who are “seasoned God-botherers”.

Three months into this placement Robin Merrow, a boy from Cari’s school, goes missing. The local rumour mill is having a field day, particularly Jessica and “the God squad”.

Cari has been spending time with Jessica and her Youth Fellowship friends at the urging of her foster parents but she’d much rather be hanging out with Stevie B., Brains and Muff, who relieve some of Cari’s boredom with actual fun. Jessica’s friends were mostly interchangeable to me but I really liked Brains.

The people in the town seemed to forget all about Robin’s disappearance after a while and while I did eventually learn a summary of his story, none of its content was really dealt with. While several social themes are touched on in this book, most don’t get a great deal of page time, such as when a character suddenly blurted out something huge about their past.

The blurb is accurate to a point, although the book ended up veering off into an entirely unexpected direction. Had I had any indication that a major plot point would focus on the intersection between homosexuality and Christian faith I may have steered clear.

To be fair, some characters in this book are not judgemental and others are well intentioned but naive. However there are also those who wander into conversion therapy territory. Sadly these conversations are quite realistic; I have heard eerily similar accounts from friends whose churches attempted to ‘heal’ them of homosexuality. With a reasonable amount of this story taking place around church activities I enjoyed Cari’s perspective as an outsider.

I identified with Cari’s feelings about foster care and would have liked to have seen this explored further. Her foster mother, Dawn, is firm but caring and Jacky, her foster father, is essentially a teddy bear. I adored Jacky. Cari fairly consistently doesn’t come home when she’s supposed to and they know she’s not truly sorry when she apologises, yet they still decide they need to trust her more by converting the garage into an apartment for her. This didn’t ring true for me. Having had my own experience with a Christian foster family that were of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ persuasion, I appreciated Dawn and Jacky’s genuineness, but they did seem too good to be true.

Content warnings include depression, homophobia and mention of sexual assault and bullying.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Atom, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group (UK), for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.

[Peterson Toscano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shirley McMillan plunges readers into the fraught world of teenagers, and she does so with warmth, humanity, compassion, and humor. Like in her other books, McMillan does not shy away from controversial topics. She meets them head-on. Without being preachy at all, she opens up a world that is in turmoil about some of the most contentious issues of our day.

Most importantly she creates characters, setting, and plot that are utterly compelling. They drew me in and kept me engaged and curious the whole way through. There is mystery, a hint of magic, and a whole lot of real life drama that keeps this story fresh from start to finish. Every Sparrow Falling is a magnificent accomplishment from a writer who is at the top of her game. She gets better and better with every book. She has added considerably to the world of Young Adult Fiction in Ireland and the UK and has provided yet another book that is also meaningful to people in the US and Canada.

[TBHONEST · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an addictive read, read the whole thing in one sitting.
Cariad is such a well written character that you can't help but feel for her being in foster homes and the emotional defense mechanisms shes created for herself.

It sheds light on LGBTQ+ topics and religion, that leave you thinking long after you've finished the book.

This is a novel that is well worth a read.

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I desperately wanted to give this book 4 stars because it was just such a real and accurate portrayal of being a teenager in a small town in Northern Ireland, the dialect was used so perfectly in both the prose and dialogue, and there were so many great characters (Cariad was fantastic, although I feel like Muff would've been a better POV given the main LGBT plotline of the book).

However, the one part of the book that irked me a little was Robin. There was literally no need for Robin or his storyline. There was no reason for him to exist at all, actually! He gave so little to the plot of the story. This book would've been a solid four stars if Cariad had just been allowed to be the badass, independent, ally queen that she so obviously was meant to be. She did not need a romance sub-plot (especially such a flimsy one)!

[thewoollygeek (tea, cake, crochet & books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing read, thought provoking, emotional and addictive. Once I picked this up I really didn’t want to put it down at all. I loved the representation and church discussion, it was very well done and not a direction I thought the book was going to take, but it was so well done. Wonderfully written and relatable and engaging characters that you truly care for, I thoroughly recommend this book, it was a highlight of the books I’ve read so far this year.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘every sparrow falling’ serves to illustrate how deeply important it is for proper, clearly in depth research to be conducted when writing about sensitive topics. first off, i sped through this in a single sitting, and absolutely adored Caraid’s perspective; she’s funny, insightful, and very realistic.

however, the contentious point for me was the bury your gays trope being used, amidst so much exploration of queer themes in the text. i personally am fine with it due to the overwhelming amount of care and caution put into it (this is very much a book that wants to have a positive effect on lgbtq youth, as evidenced by both the consistent rejection of homophobia and bigotry and the lovely four page note at the end giving context to lgbtq issues in Northern Ireland, and providing links and resources for queer young people), but it is still a harmful trope that does perpetuate trends of dead gay people in media and stories.

regardless of that, i really did have a great time reading this!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a powerful narration! At the start I was not sure I liked or understood the characters but my goodness how they developed. So many strong themes that reall6 made you think.

[Marochka · Rating 2 out of 5]

А что еще можно было ожидать от такой книги?
Да ничего хорошего.
Автор, а чего феминизма в книге так мало? Чего расизм еще не привлекла?
Терпеть не могу книги о вере и ЛГБТ. Это всегда так сложно и совершенно (мне) не интересно. Кто прав, кто виноват? Плохие-плохие верующие! Травят бедненьких геев. А те, между прочим, жизнями ради вас жертвуют! Фу такими быть!
Дурдом. Я далека от веры и далека от ЛГБТ. Мне это совершенно не интересно и во всю эту грязь лезть я не хочу.
Что касается остального сюжета… Это еще больший дурдом. Я, конечно, понимаю, что жизнь у Кэри с рождения нелегка, но она просто омерзительный персонаж. Встреть я такую личность на улице и пообщайся я с ней, единственное, что пришло бы мне в голову, это, простите, слово «быдло». Плоский юмор, развязное поведение. Но, естественно, автор выставляет ее практически святой (ну, получше настоящих верующих, это уж точно).
Можно, конечно, тут со мной поспорить: она сирота, ее воспитывали непонятно кто… Что ты хотела? А я бы хотела, чтобы хотя бы ее шутки были с толикой интеллектуального юмора, а не вот это все… Читать просто невозможно.
В общем, очередная толерантная писанинка с абсолютно неинтересным сюжетом, отвратительными героями и «святыми меньшинствами».
Я поверить не могу в то, что скоро подобные книги и все современные сериалы и фильмы доведут меня до ручки… Всю жизнь я была толерантным человеком, для меня геи, например, в сериалах не являлись меньшинствами, я вообще мало обращала внимания на их ориентацию (какая, в общем-то, разница, кто кому нравится и кто с кем спит?), главное, что это были харизматичные и крутые персонажи. Теперь же вся эта неадекватная навязчивость, в каждой бочке эта толерастия… Вот серьезно, «Ненависть, которую вы порождаете»… Это сейчас не о плохих белых людях, а о том, что сами меньшинства и трусы, которые боятся, что их затравят, если у них не будет черного гея на коляске в истории, начали буквально везде этим злоупотреблять. О простых людях уже не пишут и не снимают ничего вообще. Люди, которые всегда спокойно относились к подобному, начинают уже не выдерживать. Сколько можно? Хватит!
Почему нельзя адекватно вписать данные проблемы в нормальный сюжет? Почему обязательно нужно писать: «больше, больше толерастии, меньше, меньш�� адекватных героев и сюжета!»
Просто нет уже никаких сил.
Короче, все плохо.

Итоговая оценка: 3/10

[Annabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something about the voice of Cariad, the heroine of this story, that draws you in instantly. It's the slightly abrasive, almost rude tone, coupled with her insecurity, I think. She's a child in care trying to put on a tough front, ultimately wanting to be loved and accepted by her new family, but afraid she'll never be good enough. And it comes across so convincingly. I utterly believed her as a character within a few paragraphs, making me wonder if the author has some experience with the foster system in some capacity. That, or they researched it incredibly well.

The story deals with a number of facets of the theme of acceptance - accepting yourself, accepting others, and the problems that narrow mindedness, particularly around religion, can cause for people. The religious stuff was painful, because McMillan cleverly makes sure you know that most of the people involved are good people. Cariad's church friends, her foster parents - they aren't awful people by any definition. They're just trying to be good by the parameters they've been handed. The rejection of LGBT people by the church is bad enough, the idea of conversion therapy is horrendous, and I think McMillan handled it really well within the story.

The only thing that prevented this being a five star read for me was the character Robin. There was so much interesting stuff going on there, and he seemed very damaged to me - something that just wasn't explored in enough detail to be fully satisfying.

Overall, this was a compulsive, gripping read, with superb characterisation for the main character, and some deep and difficult themes explored. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Marilù · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every Sparrow Falling was a nice dive into a world I often hear about but never really quite grasped before this book. I hate books about religion but this one wasn't that. There's a lot of Christianity talk which made me so angry especially because of some shit some of the characters went through but it was also interesting to see, to read something different.
To be honest, I thought the start was so slow that at one point I thought about DNFing it completely but I'm pleased I didn't because it did give me some surprises at the very end. I think it starts being interesting once you hit the second half of the book, but I also think there are such different and difficult topics throughout it that maybe the author didn't want to just throw it at our faces from page one. But yes, slow start, interesting (especially for the topics!) once you leave the first half behind you and I'm not gonna lie, I did cry a little bit in the end. It was emotional and a rollercoaster and I did get angry and then sad and then angry again and then cried. This is not a happy book. It covers very important topics like foster families, being lonely, being gay in a world of Christians that would do anything to change you and finally, accepting who you are and being okay with that.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing and thought provoking book!
It's well written, heart-wrenching, and engrossing.
I appreciated how the writer was able to write the characters amaking you root for them and feel the hurt and the joy. I also appreciated the realisti description of a foster situation.
I liked the style of writing and I think that Cariad is an amazing characters, fleshed out and realistic.
It was a great reading experience and I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Payal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Religion, fitting in, sexuality, friendship, family —this book touches up all of these and others. We are taken on this journey through the eyes of the protagonist, 16-year-old Cariad, who’s been shunted from foster home to foster home all her life. When she’s placed with Dawn and Jackie in the small Northern Irish town, she is already a hardened cynic, breaker of rules, flouter of expectations. Yet, despite herself, Cari carves out her place in this little world and learns to hope again.

A lovely, unusual coming-of-age novel.

Thanks to NetGalley for a review copy.

[Amanda Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story of finding yourself and living your truth in a world that wants you to be something different. A story of finding home.

Cari is a sixteen-year-old girl who has spent her life moving from foster home to foster home. Now she's living with Dawn and Jackie in Northern Ireland and torn between being herself, the fun-loving teen who likes to drink and smoke and have a good time. Unfortunately for her, this is not what they want. She goes to a church group to please them, but she doesn't agree with the things being said.

This story is about friendship and LGBT issues and is superbly written. Cari is a strong character and there are times when I laughed and times when I cried reading this book. It deals with tragedy, with pressure to conform and to be what you're not. It's an eye-opener at time to the prejudice that many gay teens face from the church and it is written really well.

Cari has amazing friends and we see through her and her struggle for truth just how cruel the world can be. It's an excellent young adult book and one I am glad to have read.

[Tessa Buckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of Cariad, a girl whose childhood has been spent in care in Northern Ireland. As she moves from foster home to foster home, Cari has learned how to appear compliant on the surface, while enjoying the normal teenage vices behind her carers’ backs. But her new carers are Christians, and when she is expected to join the local Christian youth group, life starts becoming complicated. This books covers issues surrounding homophobia and religious prejudice, but it’s never preachy and the characters are well-drawn and sympathetic. I was hooked from the start, and in tears by the end. A great read for teenagers and adults alike.

[O'Meli Dunz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shirley did it again! This is an absolute page-turning read. The characters are marvelously created and you can really imagine how life would be walking in their shoes. Also the depiction of living in an Irish village close to the sea, is exactly the way I half-way experienced it myself and would imagine it to be like. The novel is closing with a powerful ending and a very important message. It's definitely a five-star read! I can't wait for future books, Shirley.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a realistic and captivating story with just the right amount of whimsy and superstition. I noticed a consistent motif of gently educating others, which lent itself well to the LGBT+ themes in the book.

[Ni D'Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that genuinely surprised me. Found this within my library and didn't expect it to include these rather serious topics, but has been one of the few books to get me emotional.
By the ending, I felt so many feelings including anger, heartache, joy, and distraught at the same time!
Would suggest, 100%.

- LGBT+ friendly novel

[Ellie Rose McKee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is important. It's important to Northern Ireland. It's important for the LGBTQA+ community, and it's important to the church community.

It's also very important to me personally.

I was a little hesitant to read it, to be honest. I'm a bisexual woman from a very repressed Christian background. I don't like reading about such groups. I don't like the reminder of who I was and what I was part of. It pains me.

This book did pain me in many places, but I'm so thankful Shirley wrote it. I picked it up because I trusted her to handle the topics within just right and she has done an amazing job.

The characters are so three-dimensional and the perspective is balanced. That's a very hard thing to do. Something I could not have done.

I am broken by the twist at the end and I am in awe.
This book will stay with me.
I am glad of that.

[eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so great! I don’t understand why it’s not more popular because it really deserves the hype!

[ashortbooklover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trigger warnings: homophobia, conversion therapy, death, rape, gaslighting and emotional manipulation

I was lucky enough to be gifted a copy by Atom Books and Frankie Banks, so thank you so much to them for sending me this wonderful book in exchange for an honest review!

This is such a beautiful, heartfelt and important story that McMillan has created. It tackles the struggle to find your place and the conflict that can occur between your faith and your sexuality.

Cariad is such a well-written character, who I instantly connected with and though she isn’t perfect, she is wholly human and makes mistakes, but is also a caring, supportive friend. Her dialogue often made me smirk, bu also made me saddened with her troubled past and huge conflict of loyalties. Every one of the main group of characters felt three-dimensional and nuanced, with believable motivations and hints of backstory that helped create Caraid’s support network that sometimes she didn’t even realise was there.

However, Brains was my favourite character, as I just really loved his sardonic humour and was astounded by his sheer ability and confidence in himself. He felt so real through his warmth and difficulty in admitting that he needed help, instead seeking solace in alcohol and wild nights out. Caraid shares this need for escapism, which felt so true of a teenager growing up in a conservative town. Muffy also was such a sympathetic character and his arc was one of the most complex and heart-breaking of the book.

McMillan has written a powerful, timely novel addressing the horrifying issue of conversion therapy and internalised homophobia. Slurs would appear casually though some character’s dialogue, helping to create the stifling atmosphere of Ballybaile. The scenes around conversion therapy were a tough, but necessary read. Conversion therapy is still prevalent in the UK, as shown by Stonewall’s Unhealthy Attitudes (2015) report found that 10 per cent of health and care staff have witnessed colleagues expressing the belief that lesbian, gay and bi people can be ‘cured’ of their sexual orientation. This enrages me so much and I think books like this, which bring the message that this is an abhorrent, harmful practice are so amazing and need to be read by everyone.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Family doesn’t exist, I told myself. Not for people like me, anyway."

Every Sparrow Falling was a beautiful and moving book that I thoroughly enjoyed.
This story centres around acceptance; the acceptance of gay people by the community, of Cariad by her foster parents, of different options and views.
I really liked the LGBTQ+ aspect of this story and how important it was. I appreciated how central it was given that the main character is straight because we don't see that a lot of that in fiction. Every Sparrow Falling does feature religious prejudice and homophobia, as well as one scene that came close to conversion therapy, but it was all very well handled and shone a light on the important topic.
As well as this, McMillan discusses foster care. This book was actually very informative to me about the foster system and the impact it had on children in it, and I liked that. But despite these heavy topics, there were also equally important ones of friendship and what it is to be a teenager.

I really liked the characters. Cari was very well done - her voice felt very raw and teenage, an honest and meaningful point of view. But despite this, I just couldn't seem to relate to her, and that was one drawback of the book for me. I loved all the backing characters, especially Brains and Dawn & Jacky - they were really well developed and all felt very real. I really rooted for them and their happiness.

The ending was surprising and heartbreaking - it felt a little sudden to me but I still liked it - well, not liked it, but felt deeply emotional about it.

Every Sparrow Falling was emotional and important, and I hope it changes the world.

[Ceridwenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing a review will not be simple because I don’t want to tell anything about the plot itself... when I started reading it I thought it was about a mystery (a missing boy) and it is NOT!
This novel tells the stories of a group of people living in the countryside in Northern Ireland. Cariad, the narrator, arrives in her new foster family and has to be part of a Christian youth group while befriending Brains and Muff, gays and together, Stevie B., friend with benefit and Robin an outcast she’s drawn to and who has tons of secrets.

The book deals with important issues such as being gay and/or being Christian, how to be ourselves and follow the rules (and should we follow them when they seem wrong), what it means to be "good".

Loved this book!

[Amanda 𐙚 · Rating 4 out of 5]

𐙚 4.1
I really liked all characters, especially Cariad. The plot was semi-good, I feel like there were many sub plots and unnecessary scenes too but I also enjoyed most of them. All in all a very good book!

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lost me in the final act 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was an unexpected delight!

I decided to read this book as the main character (Cariad) is a 16 year old girl in foster care. I have previously fostered teenagers and so was intrigued to see how she would be portrayed.

Over the years Cariad has kept her defences up, no-one gets too close and so she won't get hurt. She can't conform to the rules set for her, and, actually when reading you can see partly why! I completely understood her viewpoint. She is placed with an older Christian couple which from the outset seems like a poor match, Cariad is not religious at all and would rather be anywhere else. She has to meet with the local church Youth Fellowship, which she doesn't hate, but aren't exactly her type of friends.

She does have friends from school and even a “sort-of” boyfriend, so she does all the “usual” teenage things, staying out past curfew, drinking, kissing boys! But when another boy from school goes missing things change. There are rumours and gossip. Cariad goes to the cliffs (a place she likes to visit) and sees him there, things unravel and he asks her to keep his secret.

Two of her best friends are gay and in a relationship. A lot of the storyline moves to how living in such a religious society affects them and how some sectors of religion are homophobic. This has a major impact on where the plot is taken and how her friendships change. I was not expecting such an important and impactful storyline in this book, I thought it was just going to be a standard YA mystery! It shows how people can be torn between their faith and their sexuality and how communities and societies view them.

There is a darker side, towards the very end of the book which I won't give away. Truly a rollercoaster of emotions whilst reading.

At the end the author has added a note signposting various LGBTQ organisations and LGBTQ Christian groups you can contact if you feel you need to, which I think is and excellent idea. As well as a note for straight/cisgender young people on how to support your LGBTQ friends and be a good ally – I will be taking inspiration from this to use in the school I work in with teenagers as a talking point.

The book was a fairly quick read, I read it in a day as I just couldn't put it down.

[Justine Laismith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This YA book is about a girl's last chance to make foster care work even though their beliefs are at loggerheads.

Cariad has been in and out of foster homes all her life. On the brink of adult-hood, she accepts the advice of her social worker and gives this pious family her last chance in finding a stable home environment. On one hand she hangs out with the approved group. On the other, she has clandestine meetings with another group out of town, indulging in activities that would be frowned upon. But when her fundamental beliefs clashes with the former group, she must make a choice.

This book is very easy to read. I got a good sense of the different settings in the story, and the various characters feel true. I could see things clearly from Cariad's point of view. I found it incredible reading about the town's outlook towards the LGBT community. I also got quite attached to the missing boy, and wish there was more of his story at the end.