Book #77: Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

I almost wanted to give up on this book after starting it, because in the first chapter, you find out that the main character's parents both die in a car crash and leave her alone in the world. If that's not a depressing story I don't know what is. The only things that kept me going on it was that it was for my book club--and because the blurb on Goodreads said that it wasn't a tragedy, but a story of triumph. In the end, I agree. And I was glad to have continued on with it because it was an exceptionally cute story about how resilient people can be.

The story is about Willow Chance, an oddball genius twelve-year-old who was adopted by her parents at birth, and who is so awkward and strange and not-normal that she has no friends. But her parents love her intensely and she is a happy kid, even though her middle school experience is starting off with a few mishaps which gets her sent to counseling. But she starts to make a friend or two on accident through counseling, so she is happy--until she comes home to find that her parents have been killed together. But people begin to circle around and take care of her, and over the course of months, she begins to heal and come alive again.

It was so sad to me how Willow had nowhere to go once her parents died. I can't imagine what that must be like--we have such a huge extended network of family members that would all be willing in a heartbeat to take care of us or our children if we needed them to. But I loved how Willow was so weird and charming and how people got wrapped into helping her when she needed it. I really liked the story of this book, and all of the "strange" characters, and how they all grew and changed over the course of the book. I would read this again.