deborahmarkus7

This is a review copy I won in a GR giveaway.

I was worried this book would be too cutesy for my taste. When a ten-year-old girl says, "Heavenly Donuts!" I'm going to assume she's making a reference to the local snack shop. When I find out that's what passes for swearing in her family, I'm going to nerd-out and mutter about capitalizing that "D."

But then I'm going to get over myself and enjoy a sweet, funny story. And I'm going to give the author extra credit for refusing to buy into the stereotype of the teenaged sister disdaining her younger sister. Star and Winter are authentically close, and affectionate without being mawkish. I'm going to give the author a lot of credit for making that work, and making it look easy.

And then I'm going to freak out about two-thirds of the way through the book, because HEAVENLY DONUTS, Robin Herrera drops two big bombs without raising her voice. I had to screech to a halt twice in two pages and run right over to Goodreads to squawk. Then I had to be glad I'm confined to bed with a cold, because I could skip doing the dishes or anything else that would get in the way of finishing the story in one sitting.

No spoilers here. I will say that there's a lot left up in the air at the end of the book, and I'm still deciding how I feel about that. Then again, it does fit in very well with the hope-filled theme of the book. So, yeah. I'm okay with that.

I enjoyed reading this as an adult; I would have been glued to it if I'd been able to read it when I was still in the recommended age group of 8 to 12.