Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Realistic Fiction, Adoption, Coming of Age, Family
Rate: 5/5
Rate: 5/5
Synopsis:
Family.
It’s always been a loaded word for Maude. And when she is given a senior photography assignment—to create a portfolio that shows the meaning of family—she doesn’t quite know where to begin. But she knows one thing: without the story of her birth mother, who died when Maude was born, her project will be incomplete.
So Maude decides to visit her best friend, Treena, at college in Tallahassee, Florida, where Maude’s birth mother once lived. But when Maude arrives, she quickly discovers that Treena has changed. With a new boyfriend and a packed social calendar, Treena doesn’t seem to have time for Maude—or helping Maude in her search.
Enter Bennett, a cute guy who lives in Treena’s dorm. He understands Maude’s need to find her mother. And as Bennett helps Maude in her search, she starts to find that her mother’s past doesn’t have to define her own future.
Lauren Gibaldi has crafted a beautiful and timely coming-of-age story that poses the question: Is who we are determined at birth, or can we change as we grow?
To start this
book was amazing and I just couldn’t put it down. The book follows Maude a senior who is assigned
a photography project by her teacher based on family as the topic. Maude was adopted right when she was born
and she only knows that her mother passed away at her birth due to an unknown
heart condition. Maude has been
completely raised by her adoptive parents who were very open with her about her
adoption. So in Maude’s mind her family
is incomplete since she doesn’t know about her birth mother.
We learn a
lot about Maude as a person. She is
honestly just trying to find herself and she thinks learning more about her
mother will lead her to learn more about herself, which is why she embarks upon
the journey to FSU. Maude went through a
previous journey in trying to find out about her birth mother, but didn’t
really turn anything up. She only knows
that she went to FSU and grew up in Tallahassee. Maude is a lot more mature now and is on the
path to discovering herself.
I loved the
friendship between Maude and Treena.
First and foremost all friendships I think go through growing pains because
sometimes you are not always on the same milestone in your life as your
friend. I feel one of the hardest things
to handle in a friendships is when one of you is obtaining a new milestone in
your life while the other is still in another stage of their life. We can see that Treena is at a new milestone
in her life of being in college for the first time. Maude is still in high school so they are at
different stages. Treena is working on redefining herself and Maude needs to
work with that and accept that. The
growing pains they experience in their relationship are something that I love
that the author dove into and she did a great job summing up what
happened. The author also did a great
job with Maude being able to look at the situation from a more mature
perspective. In my mind the author
captured perfectly the change in the friendship.
I love the relationship
that develops between Maude and Bennett.
She is very upfront and honest with him when she gets there that she isn’t
looking to go to some guy’s room.
Bennett steps up into the role of best friend for Maude when Treena is
working on recreating herself. Bennett
really listens to Maude and he is excellent with suggestions. They have a great banter back and forth that
make the story really keep moving and you are pushing for them to end up
together as you read.
Maude learns
a lot about her mother on her journey by visiting places and talking to people
who knew her mother. This is very
challenging for Maude since some of the information was not exactly what she
expected to hear. Maude does a lot of
internalizing with the information she learns and really takes it and grows by
the end of the book.
I would
suggest this as a weekend read; I got completely sucked in on the plane and
couldn’t stop reading. It really hits on a lot of issues of not only friendship,
but new relationship, reinventing yourself, adoption, and family. The author did an amazing job handling so
many issues that you never felt overwhelmed while reading the story was very
logical.
I received a
copy of this book from The Fantastic Flying Book Club in exchange for an honest
review. This does not affect my opinion
of this book.
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Public librarian and author of THE NIGHT WE SAID YES, MATT'S STORY (a Night We Said Yes novella), and AUTOFOCUS (out 6/14/16), all with HarperTeen / HarperCollins. Fan of dinosaurs and cheesy jokes. And you.
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