Trish Doller
Contemporary Young Adult
308 pages
Bloomsbury Childrens
Available September 24th
Source: ARC from publisher for review
THE STORY (From Goodreads)
Stolen as a child from her large and loving family, and on the run with her mom for more than ten years, Callie has only the barest idea of what normal life might be like. She's never had a home, never gone to school, and has gotten most of her meals from laundromat vending machines. Her dreams are haunted by memories she’d like to forget completely. But when Callie’s mom is finally arrested for kidnapping her, and Callie’s real dad whisks her back to what would have been her life, in a small town in Florida, Callie must find a way to leave the past behind. She must learn to be part of a family. And she must believe that love--even with someone who seems an improbable choice--is more than just a possibility.
MY THOUGHTS
Where the Stars Still Shine is a story perfect for those who love seeing real life flash before their eyes as the chapters fly by; pain, joy, heartache, love and all the light and darkness that accompanies them bleeding from the pages, dripping and then coalescing into words that stay with us long after the covers are closed. Our time with Callie is brief in the grand scheme of her life as a whole, but that only makes each moment spent with her more precious, our connection to her increasing in intensity as she struggles with the sudden change in her definition of home.
Callie is a beautifully realistic young woman, utterly devoted to a mother who quite frankly is undeserving of her daughter’s unwavering support, and understandably wary about a father she doesn’t know making a play for a piece of her heart. She makes a few poor and sometimes incredibly frustrating choices, but they are choices borne of the life she’s been forced to live up until that point, and while we want to simply wrap our arms around her and tell her she’s worth more, we know the only way she’ll ever believe her life can be different is to figure it out for herself. With the poor choices however, she also makes some incredibly brave ones, valiantly fighting the battle raging between memories of the mother she’s loved unconditionally all her life and the less flattering reality freedom from her rose-tinted glasses shows her.
It’s a pleasure then to follow Callie as she slowly dares to believe that the love and affection showered on her by her new and boisterous Greek family is a constant; something she can keep and treasure and not be forced to set aside in favor of her mother’s whims. While her life doesn’t suddenly turn beautiful and perfect and full to bursting with magical solutions to all her problems, we’re left with the weighty promise of hope, something largely absent from her life when she and her mother were transient. Overall, Where the Stars Still Shine is quiet but engaging, painful but rich in laughter and love, and bittersweet but joyful all at the same time, expertly capturing a life and all its many facets and giving us a fleeting glimpse of them before we’re left to our own imaginations to figure out what's next for Callie.
Rating: 4/5
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This book was sent to me free of charge by the publisher for the purpose of a
review.
I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.
