The story of 12 year-old old Grace and her journey toward healing, home, and hope. After the tragic death of her mother, Daisy needs to move in with her long-long grandmother, a grandmother she has never known, and someone from whom her mother ran away from when she was pregnant with Grace and just kept on running. Grace's life revolved around her artistic and poetic mother as they continued to move (14 times) through-out Grace's life. After her death, Grace searches for clues she believes are left from her mother to help her make sense of her new reality, the After.I was absorbed by this gentle story: it tugged at my heartstrings. There is levity as Grace navigates new friendships in her new home with her Grandmother, but a gentle stream of sadness and longing flow through-out. It's authentic and heartfelt. Hand to readers who love a box of tissues with their contemporary fiction: think See You at Harry's (Jo Knowles), Kira-Kira (Cynthia Kadohata), and Counting by Sevens (Holly Goldberg Sloan).Grades 5 and up. I think this may need a whole new shelf in Goodreads - "Books that made me cry so hard I couldn't see the words." It's one of those stories that should be listed under "heart wrenching" in the dictionary as an example. The story of Grace trying to figure out life after losing her mother is so poignant and bittersweet, and yes, I know those words are very cliche - but they are cliches for a reason. Every time she begins to feel as if she's fitting in, guilt and doubt swirl up around her and pull her back into her grief. She feels angry at the grandmother she has never known, whom she now lives with in her mother's childhood home. She feels angry at her mother for leaving her by dying. She feels angry at herself for having even the slightest feelings of affection toward her grandmother or belonging in her home, the home her mother had left and never gone back to during Grace's life. More than anything, she wants to find a way to stay in the "Before" time when her mother was still alive, and to avoid anything that grounds her in the "After" where her mother is gone. As we read, we see her struggling to keep out all the well-meaning new people in her life - classmates, teachers, neighbors, and especially her grandmother. We become an audience of cheerleaders, rooting for her to pick up the pieces and make a new life for herself, just the way her mother chose pieces of discarded items and created sculptures. Grace's life could become a beautiful work of art if she will only let it.The characters come to such vibrant life in this story - the grieving and wounded girl who tries to push everyone away; the girl who tries to befriend her, but can only get a little way inside before Grace shuts her out; the prickly grandmother who drove her daughter away and isn't sure how to reconnect to her granddaughter; they all seem so very real. It is a very special kind of writing that takes us into the story and wraps us in it until we believe it is real and we feel a bit confused when we look up from the page and we're not in Auburn Valley, but we're sitting in our own living room instead. I highly recommend it, but please have lots of tissues handy when you read it. Don't say I didn't warn you. I read an e-book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
Do You like book Löffelglück (2014)?
I loved it so much, I hugged it when I closed it for the last time.
—Babyvamp96
"Sometimes thinking can steal the magic out of a thing"
—Teresa
