I've been putting this off for a long time, and perhaps for a good reason (since May 22nd, apparently). This is one of the two books that have ever made me cry; the other is The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, which, in hindsight, is probably a dumb book to lose your book-crying virginity too. I have no idea what about that book hit me that hard, but, goddamn, I know what hit me about this one.
Amber Appleton is homeless. Amber Appleton lives in the back of the school bus her mother drives. Amber Appleton is also the nicest girl you will ever meet (at least in well-written, modern YA). There's no snark with her, no pessimism; just pure optimism. Well, kind of.
Amber has a bit of a temper, as evidenced with her nasty outburst with the Singing Divas for Jesus Christ. Amber also kind of stalked her favourite teacher, and that kind of threw me. Up until that point, she'd been a fairly sympathetic character, as is Franks. After that, Franks is no longer sympathetic, and Amber... well, Amber still is. I don't know how to explain this properly. I guess what I'm looking for is that it dimensionalises her a little more.
But none of this is what made me cry. The beauty (that is, the tear-producing scenes) lies in its second half, and here lies its similarity to The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie. Unfortunately, I'm not going to go on at length about this here, as I don't want to spoil anything, but, suffice to say, you should read these, if only for the emotion of the second half-which totally isn't all there is to either book.
Rating: six stars (no stars taken).
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