I am vociferously passionate about good books. And I hate adverbs.
Wonderful story, all about growing up, being responsible, learning how to trust, and falling in love.
It is about how the system doesn’t care for our most vulnerable members, and how it can be hard work for a teenager to trust adults, when he has had to be a parent to his siblings for most of his life.
It is also a story about taking care of your own, being a big brother, and about finally being able to relax, and lean back and know that somebody else has your back, finally.
There is great relief, and great sadness. Wonderful feelings, and confusing adolescence. Ah, that most happy, most sad, and most confusing time of a person’s life.
Again, this author leaves me wanting. I don’t know if it is done intentionally, but the story felt slightly unfinished. Is there a second installment under way? There were at least two, maybe three chapters missing here; easily some 50 pages could have been added to fill out the meager bones of a beautiful, beautiful story. This one wasn’t finished yet. At least, I wasn’t finished with it.
I wanted more. There is deep knowledge of how teens react there, there is brilliant showing (never telling) and there is great language mastery. All things I enjoy immensely, so Here’s to you, author!
Feed me more words.
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A final word to publishers: PLEASE: Stop giving us 12 whole pages of blurbs for other books at the end of a story (here, even a blurb for the very story I was actually reading, come on!) it irritates the hell out of me. One or two is enough.
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I bought this book with my own money. Harmony Ink Press published.