BOUNCE

Since childhood, 13-year-old Evyn Linney has been wishing for one thing: a mother. However, when her widowed father announces that he’s remarrying and they’re relocating from Maine to Boston, Evyn isn’t thrilled, especially when she pieces together that moving in with her new mother, Eleni Gartos, means living with six new siblings. Although this text features the typical predictable horrors of moving, including leaving behind a best friend and the awkwardness of fitting in at a new school, the realistic and genuinely humorous details of the newly formed Linney-Gartos family sets this text apart. Also providing a slightly different angle is Evyn’s “relationship” with her deceased birthmother, Stella, who visits her with motherly advice, including the suggestion that Evyn simply let trouble “bounce” off her. These supernatural conversations are at first difficult to swallow, but they reveal much about Evyn, especially as she explores her deeper reasons for wanting to reject her new family. Earnest and funny. (Fiction. YA)