Relative Strangers
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Why is there a gap in Jules’s baby album? A wry and poignant coming-of-age novel about finding the truth in lies, salvaging hope in heartbreak, and making peace with missing pieces. Eighteen-year-old Jules has always wished for a close-knit family. She never knew her father, and her ex-addict mother has always seemed more interested in artistic endeavors than in bonding with her only daughter. Jules’s life and future look as flat and unchanging as her small Illinois town. Then a simple quest to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook leads to an earth-shattering discovery: for most of the first two years of her life, Jules lived in foster care. Reeling from feelings of betrayal and with only the flimsiest of clues, Jules sets out to learn the truth about her past. What she finds is a wonderful family who loved her as their own and hoped to adopt her — including a now-adult foster brother who is overjoyed to see his sister again. But as her feelings for him spiral into a devastating, catastrophic crush — and the divide between Jules and her mother widens — Jules finds herself on the brink of losing everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
High school senior Jules has just learned that she lived with a foster family for 19 months as a baby her mother was an alcoholic and couldn't care for Jules until she got sober. Feeling betrayed, Jules contacts her long-ago foster brother, Luke, against her mother's wishes. Luke, a piano prodigy now in college, has longed for this reunion for years, and when the two reconnect, Jules soaks up everything Luke can tell her about her past. Jules has long had an uneasy relationship with her two best friends, the time she's spending with Luke is straining things with her mother, and in a further complication, Jules is starting to fall for him, too. Garner (Phantom Limbs) weaves a complex story, with Jules gaining her foster family back only to risk losing them again: her former foster mother is dying of cancer. Garner sensitively explores the tensions that can arise between close friends, but she allows questions of what makes a family to remain the heart of Jules's story. Ages 14 up.
