Photo taken by author
From Barnes & Noble
It’s not easy being Claire. (Really.)
Claire’s life is a joke . . . but she’s not laughing. While her friends seem to be leaping forward, she’s dancing in the same place. The mean girls at school are living up to their mean name, and there’s a boy, Ryder, who’s just as bad, if not worse. And at home, nobody’s really listening to her — if anything, they seem to be more in on the joke than she is.
Then into all of this (not-very-funny-to-Claire) comedy comes something intense and tragic — while her dad is talking to her at the kitchen table, he falls over with a medical emergency. Suddenly the joke has become very serious — and the only way Claire, her family, and her friends are going to get through it is if they can find a way to make it funny again.
Rating: 5/5 Stars
What I thought: In the novel, Claire’s dad had a stroke. She has to learn to deal with things that she otherwise wouldn’t be dealing with in her day-to-day life. At first, she stays with her grandparents for a couple of days while her dad’s still in the hospital. Once they bring her dad home, she has to learn to deal with him not being himself. He is confined to the first floor of their house, and needs help doing almost anything. He can’t remember a lot of words, so there’s an added challenge of trying to figure out what he’s saying. She’s also dealing with a school social life, which is anything but simple.
It was evident that Claire grew in the course of the novel. She learned how to manage on her own better than she could in the beginning of the book. One of the best parts was the end. I was sad that it was over but the ending was really good and brought everything together.