Review by Booklist Review
Twelve-year-old Morgan recalls happy times as a child, when his sister, Claire, six years older, played with him, read to him, and confided in him as they sat together in their backyard. But Claire no longer confides in him, and her arguments with their mother reverberate through the whole family. She often doesn't return at night, and Mom has given up on her. While Claire secretly plans to leave town after graduation, Morgan wants her to mend fences. When she asks Morgan to join her for a day together, he's happy to go and hopeful of change. But Claire's uninterested in repairing her family. She's trying to say goodbye, but her method risks her life and, worse, her brother's. In Claire and her mother, Anderson creates two convincing characters who are locked into their roles, furiously angry, and unable to consider the other's viewpoint. Inevitably affected by the situation, Morgan is a sympathetic narrator who wants reconciliation but has no way to achieve it. An absorbing, if unsettling, novel that portrays escalating tension within a family.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Artistic 12-year-old Morgan has always been close with his 18-year-old sister Claire, a former champion runner. But lately, increasingly rebellious Claire's contentious relationship with their mother has strained that bond, especially since Morgan's the one left to pick up the pieces anytime Claire storms out. Still, Morgan dreams of somehow healing the rift in his family. After Claire and Mom's most recent argument, Claire returns home after several days to "borrow" Morgan for one of their traditional sibling adventures. Morgan sees it as the perfect opportunity to talk her into apologizing and coming home for good. They instead spend the day visiting Claire's favorite spots around the city and creating new memories, as when she teaches him how to drive. As Morgan learns why Claire chafes at their mother's expectations and pressure, he comes to understand the challenges that await him in the future and realizes that his family's problems may be too big to solve in a single day. This emotionally tumultuous tale of familial strife and sibling bonds by Anderson (Homebound) is a quietly intimate yet powerful examination of the need for change, growth, and maturation. Morgan and his family read as white. Ages 8--12. (May)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
Twelve-year-old narrator Morgan Turner and his older sister, Claire, used to be inseparable, even with their six-year age difference. They were a team: "She was my shoelace-knotter and jacket-zipper. She taught me how to pop my gum and Superman swing...She was always taller, faster, stronger, and smarter. Always better at everything." They abided by the Sibling Code: always there for each other, never hurting each other. But recent conflicts between Claire and their mother are disrupting the whole family and unintentionally causing pain to Morgan. The siblings are memorable characters with realistic motivations -- they aren't just set pieces moving through a plot. There's humor, too, when Claire takes her brother on a quest that includes spray painting an overpass, seeing a waterfall, and conducting a very funny driving lesson. Anderson (The Greatest Kid in the World, rev. 9/23) knows to let a big, complicated family story be complicated, to afford it the space it needs, and to allow a young boy to earn wisdom throughout the course of a powerful narrative. Dean SchneiderMay/June 2024 p.132 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Close-knit siblings in small-town Ohio approach a crossroads when one turns 18. For as long as Morgan, now nearly 13, can remember, he and big sister Claire have been inseparable. He's been seeing less of her lately, though, since the friction between his restless, defiant sib and their mother has reached the point of screaming arguments and long absences. So, when she appears at his bedroom window one morning, days after a particularly violent fight, he seizes the chance to sneak out in hopes of persuading her to come home. Instead, they embark on a daylong odyssey that includes a trip down memory lane, visits to places that have become important to Claire (including the home of her girlfriend, Sasha), and affirmations of their long-established Sibling Code (which ensures they will keep no secrets, tell no lies, and always have each other's back). Morgan comes to realize that Claire has been trying to prepare him for something unexpected. But along with winding up the suspense through significant flashbacks and encounters (plus, for comic relief, a long-promised, ill-fated driving lesson), Anderson offers nuanced explorations of a family with wide but perhaps in time healable cracks and of two young people whose distinct differences of outlook and personality are bridged by a powerful, loving bond. The siblings and their flawed but well-meaning parents are cued white; Sasha has "copper skin." An intensely felt tale of adolescents desperate for both stability and change. (Fiction. 9-13) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
