When seventeen-year-old Rosie’s mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington’s Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty-per-cent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when she tells her mum’s best friend, ‘Aunt Sarah’ that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie was not her biological mother after all... Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, hitching along on her ex-boyfriend’s GAP year to follow her to Los Angeles. But all does not go to plan, and as Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply-buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonising decision of her own - one which will be the most heart-breaking and far-reaching of all...I've been dreading writing this review, not because I didn't like this book, I really did, but because it was a difficult, raw book to read and is probably going to be just as hard to review.
When we first meet Rosie, she's hurting because her mother has just died from a genetic disease that she may possibly have, so this book throws a reader right into the emotion which kind of tells you that this book is going to be difficult the whole way through, and it is (I even shed a few tears at times!) - this makes it great though.
The first thing I'm going to touch on is the characters, because if I had anything to complain about with this book it's the character. The main character Rosie is a great and believable character but at times she was very selfish and she didn't take into consideration the consequences of her actions which I found a bit annoying. I found it very hard to like Holly until the end because she was quite spiteful, but I definitely warmed to her at the end. Andy was pretty much perfect except from the way that he always seemed to be walking away and this made it difficult for me to like him at some points, but when he shows his feelings for Rosie it really made me happy and I fell in love with him again. There are a great cast of background characters which add to the book.
The story flowed so well apart from at some points things happened that didn't make sense. At one point a character has a test done in America and gets her results in the UK, which doesn't make sense as they wouldn't have the medical records in both countries. I could see that the story was well thought out though, and I never got bored because the pacing was fantastic and of course there was plenty of drama to keep the story going.
Overall, I loved this book because it takes horrible issues such as Huntington's disease and brings them to an oblivious audience whilst also writing an entertaining and romantic book. There may have been a few character issues and a few things that didn't make sense but I still really enjoyed it.
Overall Rating: A-
Book released 2nd February 2012 by Simon and Schuster UK
Book received from the author in exchange for an honest review.
great review, I felt very much the same, it was definitely a hard hitting boko but I loved it... I can definitely understand why Andy walked away so much though... Rosie was a bit of a bitch to him! lol
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