Language: G (10 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: PG-13 (see Violence); Violence: PG-13 (sexual assault vaguely described, “night games” and unwanted touching mentioned)
BUYING ADVISORY: MS - ESSENTIAL
APPEALS TO: SEVERAL
Back when she was 5yo, Fallon was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant and left with many surgeries and a prominent scar across her face. No one else knows, but it was her own uncle who did it. That is not the only secret about her uncle that Fallon is hiding, either. And why Fallon hates her aunt, her mother’s beloved sister, so much. When Fallon, now 13yo, learns that her uncle has died, going to the funeral stirs everything up. Then her aunt moves in and Fallon is headed on a crash course with revelations.
Graff includes a sub-plot about the school musical and Fallon is helped when she comes to understand a girl who Fallon thought was her enemy. The sexual assault is mentioned, but as vaguely described as Hester Prynne’s encounter with Arthur Dimmesdale in A Scarlet Letter (none of us in my high school senior English class caught it - our teacher had to point it out to us). Fallon also starts attending Survivors of Sexual Assault meetings. Graff includes some other complicated subplots, but handles all of them deftly, and gives Fallon loving people around her and a big heart.
Cindy, Middle School Librarian, MLS
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