Kristin Harmel: After

One Word Summary: Kate's Club

Synopsis: Lacey's father is dead. He was a great dad. One year later she's relishes the opportunity to help other kids who've lost a parent too soon. Turns out there's a lot of kids grieving.

Review: Is is heinous to criticize a story about a girl who's father/mother/sibling dies? In short this novel was okay, but not particularly memorable. I liked that Kristin Harmel included other ways a child can loose a parent. I liked the shifting dynamics of a family coping with loss, and the depiction of the other two families as well.

Rate: 2 rainbows

Other Books:

The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessin
That one with the girl who gives a boy a leprechaun hat. She dies tragically and he leaves it in her coffin. She's the friend of the girl who's mother dies.
The one with the girl who learns to surf. She's from New Jersey.

Delacort Press 2010

Jacqueline Davies: Lost

One Word Summary: Hats. Hats. Hats. Fire!
Plot Summary: Essie is sixteen. Her baby sister is gone. She works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which is about to burn down. Her new best friend looks like she's lost. And she loves the boy next door. Everything is wrong. Just when it seems that it will all be okay, everything goes up in flames.

More Words: Riveting. The whole time I was reading I was also dreaming up gruesome deaths for little Zelda. I'm not really in love with precocious children, at least when they are characters written by people who've never touched a child with a ten foot pole. However, Zelda I could stomach. And her sister Essie was superb. Well, all the characters were great. I really liked the story- all three of them. Tragic, Heartbreaking, Gruesome... with a little bit of hope and a lot of love. It's a bit like The Moonlight Sonata.

Other Books:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
{the book that's on the tip of my tongue}

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