Stargazing For Beginners by Jenny McLachlan

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing 

Released: 6th of April 2017 

Science geek Meg is left to look after her little sister for ten days after her free-spirited mum leaves suddenly to follow up yet another of her Big Important Causes. But while Meg may understand how the universe was formed, baby Elsa is a complete mystery to her. 

And Mum’s disappearance has come at the worst time: Meg is desperate to win a competition to get the chance to visit NASA headquarters, but to do this she has to beat close rival Ed. Can Meg pull off this double life of caring for Elsa and following her own dreams? She’ll need a miracle of cosmic proportions …

What I Have to Say 

This is a sweet, geeky and very touching tale. It shows how hard it can be when parents don't take care of their children as they should and the way that elder children have to pick up the pieces. Meg does a really good job of keeping her life together when she has every right to fall apart. And she even has time to learn a thing or two about the importance of friends along the way. 

The characters that McLachlan creates are so vivid. Meg and Elsa are very well defined and unique (especially considering Elsa is only a baby), but so is Meg's grandfather, Ed and the whole of Biscuit club. It's the characters I think that make McLachlan's books so fun to read. You really get to know characters who feel real. 

The friendships that Meg found felt really real as well. Even though there was some teacherly intervention at times, none of them felt force. It felt so real and believable to see them fall into friendship with each other. 

Though sad, this is also a very comforting book to read. I think I could read Jenny McLachlan's books forever. 

My thanks go to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review. 

Lost Stars or What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love by Lisa Selin Davis

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 272

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 6th of October 2016 

I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you don't know ...

In the aftermath of her older sister's death, sixteen-year-old Carrie is taken under the wings of her sister's friends, and finds herself forsaking the science nerds of her former life and slipping into a daze of cheap beer and recreational drugs. Carrie - a talented guitar player and obsessive tracker of the coming Vira comet - is partying hard and fooling around with boys she doesn't even like, even though she's desperate for a boyfriend.

Her mother, enveloped by grief at the loss of her eldest child, has retreated to a monastery in the Catskills that requires a vow of silence. With her family splintered apart, Carrie is overcome at times by uncontrollable rages and her father decides to send her to a boot camp for wayward teens. Compounding the shame, and to her horror, she is forced to wear work boots and a hard hat - boy poison.

Then she meets Dean, a fellow musician and refugee from his own dark past. Throughout the summer Carrie learns more about Dean, about her sister's death, about her own family's past, and about herself...as well as about the Bee Gees, disco and the difference between wood and sheet-rock screws. Through love, music and her precious comet - and no small help from Lou Reed - Carrie fumbles her way through the complex web of tragedies and misunderstandings, to the heart of who she is and who she wants to be.

What I Have to Say 

This is a very touching picture of a family torn apart by grief. It took me a while to get into, as it does a lot with depressed characters as it's hard to connect with a character who is in a numb state of mind. But, as always with such characters, as I began to understand her and why she was the way she was, I connected with her a lot more. 

The really interesting bits happened when the family started to face their problems.While Carrie was just doing drugs and getting in trouble with her dad, it bored me a little, but after she met Dean and started to open up and confront things more it got much more interesting. 

I think there were some very intense emotions in this book and it looks at grief from multiple angles. It looks at relationships between family members both the anger and pain on the surface and the much deeper emotions that aren't expressed so easily. 

I wasn't blown away by this book, but by the end of it, I felt it was definitely worth reading. 

My thanks go to Hot Key Books for providing me with this copy for review.