Book Synopsis:
Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life...until now.
Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read.
My Review:
4.5/5 stars. This was such a heartwarming story. It took a little bit to get into it early on, but once I did I was invested. I loved all the growth of the characters and how much some of them change by the end of the book. The prose was also very moving at times.
At the beginning, I wasn't super invested in Willow as a character. I thought she was a bit too weird, even for a gifted kid. As she was describing all her odd habits and everything, it felt unrealistic that someone would be like that. I'm a gifted kid and I know others, but she seemed abnormally strange. I didn't have that feeling as much for the rest of the book, though, as she was suddenly taken out of her routine.
Despite how weird she seemed at first, I couldn't help but become attached to her. I loved her friendship with Mai and, later, everyone else in the family. I could really empathize with her and felt her pain. The way she acted after her parents died and the way she thought about life was written in such a sad way.
Similarly, this book was filled with unexpectedly beautiful prose at times. There were a lot of lines that made me stop for a second and think about them. The observations and deep thoughts Willow had were pretty moving sometimes. I didn't think a middle-grade book would have that, but a lot of lines were very well-written and mature.
The biggest thing I loved about this book was the characters' relationships with each other, and the character growth from the beginning to the end of the story. Willow impacted the people around her without even realizing - Dell taking better care of himself, Jairo going back to school - just by being herself. Even Willow herself changes by the end. She learns to be more open with people. Everyone in the story is better because of Willow.
Content Warning:
This book is perfectly clean. There is one time where Willow observes two guys looking at "hot girls" on TV and not understanding the appeal, but there's no romance. There's no language either. In terms of violence, the only thing is the crash that kills her parents, but that is not described in detail. The only thing that might be hard for some readers is the emotion this book brings. The book is about losing your family and foster care, which might be a sensitive subject for some people.
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