Mum looked dead excited, and I guess she thought that I’d be excited too. And maybe I should have been. I mean, it’s not every day your family finds out they’ve inherited their very own big old white-and-black mansion. But to be honest, I found the idea about as exciting as a wet sock, and I guess it showed on my face..
‘I thought you’d be thrilled, Sunny,’ said Mum. ‘You love that old house.’
‘I loved the house because it was Granny Carmelene’s. When she was alive! I can’t imagine living there now. It’d be sad.’
First she had to adapt to being part of a blended family, and becoming a big sister when her dad and his new partner had a baby. Now Sunny Hathaway has to face even more changes when Mum and Carl decide the family should move into the mansion they’ve just inherited. And her dad’s house is not much of a refuge. Her new baby sister is gorgeous, but her step mother, Steph, is struggling with being a new mother. For Sunny it seems life is all changes.
Mostly Sunny with the Chance of Storms is a rich sequel to Sunny Side Up (2008) and,like its predecessor is a blend of reality, whimsy and complexity. With two step siblings and a step father at her mum’s home, and a step mother and baby half sister at her dad’s, Sunny’s life is fairly complicated. But add in a grumpy Italian gardener living in a cottage in the grounds of the mansion, a first crush on a boy with no telephone or internet, and a recently deceased grandmother who may be visiting in the form on an angel, and complicated just doesn’t come close to describing Sunny’s life.
There is a lot happening in this book, but it is not overloaded – rather it is a finely tuned, feel-good story which will appeal to upper primary aged readers.
Mostly Sunny with the Chance of Storms, by Marion Roberts
Allen & Unwin, 2009