Rating:★ ★ ★ ☆
This story is told by two different girls, alternating between their points of view. One girl is Katie and she struggles with the fact that she's been adopted from Russia and the need and desire to know more about that without offending her parents. She also has heart problems and feels stifled by her parents' worry and concern for her health.
Ana is her best friend, and she struggles with the fact that her hockey playing dad left them and her mom is suffering depression and her grandma (from Russia) has come to take over. Add to that her little brother is being bullied. She needs to fix it all!
We get to see how both the girls feel like the other has everything perfect in her life, but we as the reader know that they don't. We go on the journey of how they both are drawn to each other, and yet have some friction that pulls them apart. And then they come together again to help each other deal with their issues.
It was a well told story, but for me it dragged down a bit with the issues. It was a little heavy I thought for a MG and I feel like kids this age would have been bored with it. But it was fun to learn some Russian culture and some hockey culture!
Well that’s too bad. It probably didn’t need to be THAT issue-y.
ReplyDeleteToo bad it's too issue-y, but I like the idea of learning about the Russian culture as I love the Russian culture. :)
ReplyDeleteJenni: Did you click on the Russian music we've been into lately? Because we're going pretty crazy over it... :)
DeleteIt definitely could have been tighter. And probably lighter. There was definitely a lot going on with the plot.
ReplyDelete