Tillie is about to become a mother. As in, right now. She is going into labor, several weeks early, and the terror of doing this alone causes her to reflect on her deeply troubled childhood. She reflects on the way her family dealt with her mother's severe depression, a secret to be hidden a way, both figuratively and literally. We spend time looking at life through her 8 year old eyes. And Tillie's life is messy; her family is odd, and everything about her just seems wrong. But nothing is as wrong as when Tillie starts to figure out the truth behind who made the choices regarding how the family came to be the way it did. Finally a book that tells a story like this from the a different perspective. We always hear adults talk about their depression, and how it affects them, or how they think it affects their families. We hear teachers talk about troubled children in their classes, and speculate about the causes at home. But this, this is a story, from the perspective of the one hurt the most by it, the silent victim that we so rarely hear from. I wish more stories were told like this. Susan Henderson does an fantastic job of shedding light on the affects of mental illness of a parent on young children. One can not help but fall in love with Tillie, her innocence, her youth, her bites, her whims. If I were Tillie, I would bite too.
I love that the story did not focus on the easy and expected. Adult Tillie, mother to be, does not fixate on the idea of becoming like her mother. In fact, adult Tillie is really just a catalyst to get to child Tillie. We are only with adult Tillie the minimum amount of time necessary, because what happens in that 8th year is what is most important. And while it would be easy to simply have made Tillie's father a "bad guy", his character is much richer, and more complex than that. I worried, at times, about the implications with Anne, and was pleased that it never went where I thought it might.
All in all, a stunning, and powerfully dramatic story, that will cause me to pay a bit more attention to the Tillies I encounter every single day.
A touring review copy of this book was made available courtesy of Crazy Book Tours.
Adora, Miranda, Sophie, Genevieve. Four women whose lives are irreversibly intertwined. Adora and Sophie are mother and daughter, as are Miranda and Genevieve, yet some bonds are stronger than blood. Ever since childhood, Genevieve has been spending her summers with Adora, and trying her hardest to imitate her. Adora pampers the girl, and grooms her to point where she even arranges her first real encounter with love in the form of the dashing Jack. Unfortunately, Adora does all this to fill a void left years earlier by the death of her beloved brother Sebastian. As the situation continues to play out, each woman realizes just how little they really knew each other.
Carley and Hunter have a complicated friendship, one that makes no sense in their snobbish town, where appearance is everything. Why in the world does the golden boy insist on befriending the fat girl? Yet, they understand each other in a way no one else does. When Carley's parents insist on commissioning a book to be written on her behalf as a Sweet Sixteen present, it is to impress and engage Hunter that she even agrees to get involved. She tries to distract him from his self destructive ways, so he instead begins destroying everyone else. Will he destroy Carley? 
Jason is essentially raising himself. His mother died, and his father, well, let's face it. His father is crazy. And since Jason has no friends, he created people in his mind to keep him company. But when Jason's behavior at school results in mandatory in school counseling, Jason starts to form real relationships with the other students in his therapy group, he begins to need the people in his mind less and less. It is these real connections and real people that afford him the courage to deal with his real problems.
Rhiannon plans every aspect of her life. Daily goals, weight loss, work progress. She never planned to fall in love, however, and she certainly never planned on having that love ripped away from her. Fate threw all of Rhiannon's plans for quite a loop, and she has been struggling to regain control ever since. It takes a horrific car accident to show Rhiannon how little she is actually in control of, and how much her struggle for control has actually prevented her from living her life. So what does she do know, when she actually wants to plan to live?
Jason Dark and Siu Lin are back in the latest installment of the Jason Dark series. This time, there are a series of daily unexplained deaths, and even odder, numerous owl sightings. Are the two odd occurrences linked? Jason Dark is the man to find out. While on the case, he runs into a mysterious street hawker selling snake oil. How does this huckster factor into the whole mystery?
Told in the three alternating voices of the children of meth addict Kristina, this is the story of what drug abuse can do to a family. Tales of abuse, foster care, mental illness, and never really knowing a mother's love permeate all three teenagers stories. We hear from Hunter, the oldest, as well as Autumn, and Summer. Their stories are told in unison, with some similarities, and a stunning triple climax.
Teagan is completely focused. She does well in school, has a good job working at the zoo, and is determined to get a scholarship. Nothing will deter her, she has a plan. But when Finn comes to stay with her family, everything changes. Before she knows it, her family suffers tragedy, and she starts seeing strange things all around her. Suddenly, a world she thought only existed in the Irish old world tales her Mother told her is exploding all around her. Teagan's world is overrun- with goblins.