Sorry for Your Loss
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From Printz Honor winner and Morris Award finalist Jessie Ann Foley comes a comitragic YA novel that will appeal to fans of Jandy Nelson and Jeff Zentner.
As the youngest of eight, painfully average Pup Flanagan is used to flying under the radar. He’s barely passing his classes. He lets his longtime crush walk all over him. And he’s in no hurry to decide on a college path.
The only person who ever made him think he could be more was his older brother Patrick. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup with a family who won’t talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, “sorry for your loss.”
When Pup excels at a photography assignment he thought he’d bomb, things start to come into focus. His dream girl shows her true colors. An unexpected friend exposes Pup to a whole new world, right under his nose.
And the photograph that was supposed to show Pup a way out of his grief ultimately reveals someone else who is still stuck in their own. Someone with a secret regret Pup never could have imagined.
Winner of the 2020-2021 North Star YA Award
Named to YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults List
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Chicago, this introspective story about grief within a large family focuses on high school junior Pup Flanagan, the overshadowed youngest of eight children. Now, almost three years after Pup's brother Patrick died suddenly while at college, the Flanagans seem to have moved on, all except for Pup and his brother Luke, a law student. Luke has developed a drinking problem, and Pup has failed at romance and is in danger of failing Studio Art. As a last-ditch effort to save his grade, he tries photography at his teacher's suggestion. With the help of a mentor, Albrihet, an advanced art student and Eritrean immigrant who is navigating problems within her own close-knit family, Pup finds a way to use his camera as a vehicle to express the impact of his loss. Well-delineated characters and Foley's (Neighborhood Girls) subtle hand distinguish this moving novel, showing Pup's gradual healing process as he gains enough courage and self-confidence to help his alcoholic brother and establish a meaningful relationship with Albrihet. Scenes of the Flanagans' weekly family dinners, which include in-laws and cousins, are perhaps the most revealing, effectively capturing the family's unspoken tensions, loyalty, and love. Ages 14 up.
