Happenstance

Written by Debra Loughead

BWL Publishing

978-0-228632696

284 pp.

Ages 12+

January 2025 

 

What would bring a teen from a wealthy family with both parents and a younger brother and, until recently, a nanny/housekeeper together with a girl who lives with her struggling mom who left her abusive husband, can't hold down a job and now dates incessantly looking for a new man? A ring, a moonstone ring. One loses it, one finds it. It's all happenstance.

 

Happenstance is told in the alternating voices of Sophie and Tara. Sophie has a dad who is a bank VP and is always travelling while her mom spends tons of money, often on new age stuff. Her mom has been hospitalized previously for depression and her brother Jonah deals with anxiety. Now that Dhanu, their nanny/housekeeper, has returned to Sri Lanka, their household seems unsettled. It feels even worse when the moonstone ring Dhanu had given Sophie's mom goes missing when Sophie borrows it.

 

That very ring is found by Tara, a Grade 10 student who loves acting and is in the school's production of "Our Town" though only as an understudy to the lead role. At home, her mom had tried repeatedly to leave Tara's disreputable dad but finally made it permanent in the past year. Still Mom can't keep a job and is always going on dates with guys she meets on dating apps, hopeful of meeting the right one. Though Tara's friend Priya tells her to look for the owner of the ring, Tara is reluctant to give up something so mesmerizing, especially after her mother wins $75,000 and Tara feels like the ring had something to do with their change of luck.

 

As Tara contemplates returning the ring or not, and Sophie wonders whether to look for it or not–both girls are grappling with family dynamics that leave them resentful and confused–their lives are taking odd turns, particularly with their best friends and with a new guy, Silas. He's the lead in Tara's school play and he's Sophie's new neighbour. But who will catch his eye?

 

Debra Loughead, who has previously published multiple books as Deb Loughead including The Secrets We Keep, Bright Shining Moment and The Snowball Effect, looks at two girls and how different they may be and yet how similar too. No one would ever see the similarities, but the moonstone ring allows their lives to become parallel and flipped to some degree. The superstitions tied to that ring may or may not be legit. The coincidences that occur may be just that: accidental and unrelated. But it offers an opportunity to see that lives are not all unfortunate or all lucky. It's a question of perspective. When Sophie and Tara ultimately meet, and connect with Silas, the teens see what they have in common even among the distinctions of their lives. Their new journeys with their families, their friends, and each other may have been prompted by a moonstone, a gem that signifies new beginnings, but how those new beginnings manifest is all up to those kids. Debra Loughead gives them the character to determine the nature of those new beginnings.

 

I don't know if that moonstone ring had any impact on these teens. After all, their lives are constantly in flux with friends, family, school, career choices, and more. But Debra Loughead makes us believe that things can happen sometimes by chance and sometimes by design and it's up to us to work with what we're given and make choices that are right for more than just ourselves.