*Warning: This review may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Release Date: February 1, 1998
Pages: 256
Source: Own
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Release Date: February 1, 1998
Pages: 256
Source: Own
The Story:
Can the truth thaw Chrissa's frozen heart?
It's been three years since Chrissa's father walked out of her life. Too angry even to speak to her mother, Chrissa is obsessed with finding the answers to her questions: Why did her father leave? Why does she never hear from him? And is it somehow her fault, for not being the daughter he wanted her to be?
Now, unable to deal with Chrissa's silence, her mother has sent her away from New York City home to spend a year in the country with her grandmother. Perhaps in Gram's house, in the rural community which her father grew up, Chrissa will discover the secret of his disappearance.
Instead, Chrissa finds more secrets and suspicions. And, surprisingly, she finds strength she never knew she had. Strength she will need when she must confront the most devastating secret of all.
-- via Barnes & Noble
Rating: THREE Gold Stars!!!
My Review: One Word: SUSPENSEFUL
Three years ago Chrissa's father never came home from work ... In those three years she's never heard a word from him ... Why did he just leave her? Was it somehow her fault? Or did her mother have something to do with her father's disappearance?
At the beginning of the novel the setting takes place in New York City, where sixteen year old Chrissa Jennings shares an apartment with her single mother, Lorraine. In the three years Nicholas Jennings has been gone, Chrissa and her mother haven't been able to talk about his abandonment. It was too hard for Chrissa. Unable to blame the actual person causing her pain, Chrissa blames her mother. for her loss. With no other options, Lorraine sends Chrissa to live at her grandmother's house -- which is thirty minutes out of Rochester -- for one year.
Elvina Jennings is Chrissa's grandmother as well as the mother of Chrissa's father. Elvina is a stubborn women but, unlike Chrissa, is easily deceived by appearances. In steps Sister Harmony who isn't who she appears to be. Will Elvina -- also known as Ma Jennings or Grams -- take the bait or see Sister Harmony for who she really is?
What actually happened to Chrissa's father? Is he dead? Alive? Living with another family? Will Chrissa ever forgive her mother? Develop a relationship with her grandmother? But more importantly, will living at her grandmother's thaw out Chrissa's insides that are like ice?