Title: Send Me A Sign
Author: Tiffany Schmidt
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Pub Date: September 2012
Pages: 304

Source: I borrowed this from my local library.

About The Book:
Mia is always looking for signs.

A sign that she should get serious with her on-again, off-again soccer-captain boyfriend. A sign that she’ll get the grades to make it into an Ivy-league school. One sign she “didn’t “expect to look for was: “Will I survive cancer?” It’s an answer her friends would never understand, prompting Mia to keep her illness a secret. The only one who knows is her lifelong best friend, Gyver, who is poised to be so much more. Mia is determined to survive, but when you have so much going your way, there is so much more to lose.

From debut author Tiffany Schmidt comes a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of one girl’s search for signs of life in the face of death.

I first heard about this book last year just before BEA and it was one of those books that I really wanted to get but sadly was unable to get. It has been on the top of my wish list since then and I was so thrilled when I saw this sitting on the new release shelf at my library. I knew I had to bring it home to read.

I have to say I am exactly like Mia. I always look for a sign and know that there is a hidden message in things. I have always been like that.

I have to start off by saying that the book is really good and once I read what it was about and that Mia had cancer I figured it wouldn’t end well and that there would be a ton a tears shed so I made it a point to sit with Kleenex near by.

Mia is your typical popular high school girl. She is a cheerleader and is sort of dating the captain of the soccer team (Ryan) and he is like your typical guy and he never fully wants to commit to a relationship. He would rather play the field so to speak.

When Mia begins to develop unexplained bruising her parents become concerned and take her to the Dr. Mia thinks its nothing seriously until the doctor informs them that she has leukemia. Mia’s world turns upside down and she is trying her best to cope. Her mother is in denial and her father is in information overload.

Mia and her mother decide to keep it to themselves and not tell anyone. The only one who knows is Gyver (yes short for Macgyver, oh how I loved that show) and he is a friend whom she has known all her life, from next door. Mia thinks that once she does her round of chemo that things will go back to normal and no one will know what has gone on with her.

Well you know that won’t happen because if it did then that would be the end of the story right?

When school starts again Mia and her friends make a pack to remain single in their last year of school. Well when Ryan hears about this pack its almost like he wants what he can no longer have. He almost makes it his mission to date Mia and I think as much as Mia would like it she just can’t do.

Now in every young adult book you have to have the love triangle. You wonder who will get the girl in the end. Will it be that super sweet guy next door or the jock. This is exactly what Mia must decide will it be Gyver, her childhood friend who was there through thick and thin and stayed by Mia’s side throughout the whole chemo or will it be Ryan, the jock who likes to play the field?

I liked Ryan and loved that he wasn’t really portrayed as a bad guy that you just wanted to hate although at times I wondered if he really wanted Mia or just the idea of having what he couldn’t have. Now I have to say for me I was personally rooting for Gyver. He just came off to me as the sweet guy next door.

Who will Mia choose to be with? What will happen when her world comes crashing down and she has to try and mend fences with her friends? What will her friends say when they finally find out?

I really enjoyed this book and I think Tiffany has a promising career as an author and I look forward to reading her future books.

Title: The Talk Funny Girl
Author: Roland Merullo
Pub Date: August 2012
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Pages: 304

Source: I received this from the publisher for my honest and sincere review

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with her own home, every day. Marjorie has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their ignorance of and disdain for the wider world. Marjorie is tormented by her classmates, who call her “The Talk-funny girl,” but as the nearby factory town sinks deeper into economic ruin and as her parents fall more completely under the influence of a sadistic cult leader, her options for escape dwindle. But then, thanks to a loving aunt, Marjorie is hired by a man, himself a victim of abuse, who is building what he calls “a cathedral,” right in the center of town.

Day by day, Marjorie’s skills as a stone worker increase, and so too does her intolerance for the bitter rules of her family life. Gradually, through exposure to the world beyond her parents’ wood cabin thanks to the kindness of her aunt and her boss, and an almost superhuman determination, she discovers what is lovable within herself. This new found confidence and self-esteem ultimately allows her to break free from the bleak life she has known, to find love, to start a family, and to try to heal her old, deep wounds without passing that pain on to her husband and children.

By turns darkly menacing and bright with love and resilience, The Talk-Funny Girl is the story of one young woman’s remarkable courage, a kind of road map for the healing of early abuse, and a testament to the power of kindness and love.

When I was contacted to review the book I really wanted to read it because it sounded really good and I honestly tried several times to pick it up to read but in the end i would put it back down.

Finally as we rolled in to 2013, I told myself that I really needed to sit down and finish this no matter what and that is what I did this past week. I haven’t been feeling very well these last few days so I took to curling up on the couch and reading.

Before sitting down to officially write my review I took to amazon to see what others thought and felt and sadly I feel as though I am in the minority. Everyone has loved the book and I think that’s what makes us all a special group because not everyone will love every book so with saying that please don’t leave me hate comments because we are all entitled to our opinions.

The book is about a young seventeen year old girl named Marjorie and she lives in a rural part of New Hampshire with her parents (who I honestly have to say I didn’t like from the get go. I thought the mother would encourage the father to punish Marjorie at any chance and for any reason) and she is basically isolated from the world and people until an outsider comes to town and reports to the authorities about this young girl (when she was 9 years old) so she goes to school. At first she is having a hard time but quickly makes up for lost time and is now finally in the same grade as her peers. Although she stands out with the way she looks and talks she makes the best out of it and becomes a hard worker.

As the story progresses we discover that Marjorie is being abused at home by her parents. Which honestly I have a hard time reading these kinds of books because I always wonder what kind of parents or people would purposely hurt someone who is defenceless? The abuse is stemmed from the Pastor at the church the family attends. He thinks its perfectly fine to douse them (taking them down to a river, no matter what time of the year, and pouring cold water on them), boying (forcing the girls to wear boy clothes and be treated like a boy for the punishment period) and facing (forcing them to wear a bag over their heads and being poked by people of the church) This was another part of the book that bothered me. I just think its wrong.

Almost at eighteen years old Marjorie is told she must find work to support her family. Her father is on a life time disability and her mother doesn’t work. Living in a small rural area work can be hard to find and more so for her because of her speaking which I found was another reason I couldn’t get into the book it was just to hard for me to read and enjoy. I find it hard to believe that she would speak like that because she started school at the age of 9. Why didn’t some teacher step in? She wasn’t that isolated. Plus no one in the community spoke like that, it was just her parents.

So despite the way she spoke she finds work with Sands (a stone mason) who has bought the old burned down church to rebuild and turn into a Cathedral. Throughout the book he teaches her the way and what to do. She is enjoying it. I think this is the one bright spot in her life. She soon finds out that there is more to Sands then meets the eye. In a good way. Sands knows her aunt Elaine and I honestly think he brought Sands into the community so that he could keep an eye on her. Making sure she was safe and okay. Which I loved and you could see her aunt was doing what was best and trying to help her.

Another worry for Marjorie was the fact that young girls were going missing in and around her area. I was always curious to who was involved and how it would play out throughout the book. Would Marjorie be a victim to that? I was honestly shocked when it was revealed because I had no idea as nothing lead to that person.

I wish I could have enjoyed the book more and I feel so bad writing a negative review but I honestly just didn’t enjoy it.

Have you read it? If so what did you think?