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Jan 27, 2018darladoodles rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I have loved all of Dorren Cronin's other books and was looking forward to reading her debut middle grade novel. She chose a very serious topic to tackle -- a teenage girl named Riley suddenly has a stroke after riding a roller coaster. Her cousin Nora manipulated her into joining in on the ride and the book follows her as she struggles with the changes in Riley, the long recovery and most of all the guilt. The book shows quite accurately the stress that family relationships endure in times of crisis and how past hurts bubble up to the surface. There is some helpful explanations on the dynamics of triangles that I believe would be very helpful to preteens especially. What I did not like was the way the f bomb (even pictured on Riley's word chart) and the word fuzz were liberally sprinkled throughout by both adults and Riley especially. This is not a book I would give to a tween to read without supervision, if at all.