When Mia was 15 her mother was diagnosed with cancer and dies 12 days later. Then her father has a second heart attack. This is a story about how Mia coped with these two events.
This book is well written. It follows how a 15 year old girl would act and speak. It goes through such details as her having a crush her first boyfriend and school.
It does not pretend that she gets a happy ending and her life is all rosy after her mother dies. It paints an accurate portrayal of how a person would react to such a situation. For example, she fails some classes at school and she faces other tough obstacles.
What could have been a depressing book instead uses humor to somewhat lighten up the mood. The use of humor in this book is appropriate. It does not come of as mocking or to cheapen what Mia is going through but rather as a way to express grief and such in a way that a 15 year old can process it.
The book feels disjointed in ways. There are several stories that interweave with each other. It almost feels like different books. There is a thin common thread that joins them all together. I think this is a good use of writing technique because it symbolizes how events in our lives seem to be fragmented but in reality there is something that joins it all together.
At the end of the book we find out this is a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s own experience with her mother dying and her father having two heart attacks. After learning this I became curious about her own life. I hope she writes a memoir.
Another interesting fact is that the editor attempted to get this published as an adult novel but no publisher want to do that so instead it was published as a YA novel. I thought it was in between. I could see where it would be taken as a YA novel but at the same time I felt that the issues could stood as an adult novel. Upon father reflection the style of writing mostly reflects how an YA novel would feel.
