Suzanne LaFleur Books in Order

Suzanne LaFleur was born just outside Boston, Massachusetts, in 1983. She grew up first in Newton and later in Natick, where books, swimming, family pizza nights, cartoons, and stories were all part of the mix. Outside school, she read late into the night, filled notebooks, and put on plays and shows for siblings and neighborhood kids.

Before she could form words, LaFleur was already making stories. She filled paper with scribbles, rolled it into a scroll, and unrolled it to “read” aloud for anyone willing to listen. It was an early version of the job she wanted, creating a world and inviting someone else inside.

She was serious about it early.

At nine, beginning fourth grade at St. John the Evangelist Elementary School in Wellesley, she was given a blank composition book and told to write five lines each day. Five lines became pages, then a novel. She soon told adults she planned to write books for kids her own age, and she stuck with that plan. The daily assignment gave her a simple lesson that shows up in any writer’s life: small pages add up.

College gave her room to study the pieces that interested her most. At Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, she majored in English and European History and completed an honors project, a young adult speculative novel called The Story of Green. Studying language, creative writing, fantasy, and history gave her more tools for building fictional worlds while keeping the feelings inside them believable.

LaFleur then moved to New York City for the MFA Writing for Children program at the New School. There she began Love, Aubrey, the book that became her debut. It follows a girl sent to Vermont to live with her grandmother after an unbearable family loss, and it established the direct, child-centered approach that runs through LaFleur’s work.

Hard things are never treated as small things in these books.

In Eight Keys, Elise starts middle school while a set of locked barn rooms connects her to the father she barely remembers. Listening for Lucca brings Siena to a Maine beach house, where a strange pen links her family’s present worries to a World War II story. The mysteries matter, but the emotional questions matter just as much: How do friendships change? How do families make room for fear, hope, and things that are hard to explain?

LaFleur also writes about conflict on a wider scale. Beautiful Blue World and its sequel Threads of Blue follow Mathilde and her best friend Megs in the fictional country of Sofarende during wartime, when children are pulled into adult decisions. Counting to Perfect returns to a closer setting, following swimmer Cassie as she and her older sister, Julia, take an unexpected road trip with Julia’s baby. Across these books, young people are trying to name feelings that the adults around them cannot quite fix.

Her stories return to grief, divided loyalties, changing friendships, siblings, moves, and belonging, while still leaving space for warmth, ordinary routines, and hope. LaFleur has divided her time between Natick and New York City. She has said she still enjoys swimming, pizza, cartoons, and listening to, making up, and sharing stories.