Books I read in December 2017

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate ****

This was a good one!  My mom loaned it to me and I liked it from the first page (I love it when that happens).  It was sad and complicated and hopeful.  It's about a family that lives on a riverboat.  They are poor and when the parents go to the hospital because the mother is having complications giving birth, the rest of the kids are taken.  They stay in a horrible house for awhile and then are adopted.  What was really sad, is that the story is based on truth.  There really was an evil woman who ran the whole operation of kidnapping and selling children.

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan ****

Another book to love!  This one is about a young girl who is a genius.  After tragedy strikes, she is taken in by a cobbled together family of quirky mostly lovable people.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin ***

This is one of Mark's favorite books he read while I was homeschooling him.  Since it's a Newbery and since he loved it so much, I decided to read it.  While I was reading it, I realized Mark and I have very different taste in books.  Which is maybe not too surprising.  I didn't love it.  It was constant action with little time spent on characters.  (Mark = action)  Toward the end of the book it all came together with a great message and I liked it more.

Crazy Ladies by Michael Lee West **

This was a very aptly named book.  It's about the women in a family.  The most normal one was Gussie, the matriarch, who had a body buried in her garden of a man she killed.  The characters made pretty bad decisions (again, the dead body wasn't the worst) and weren't exactly relatable but there were bright spots of family and loyalty so I gave it an "OK" rating.