Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A cancer survivor must readjust to "normal" middle school life in this hopeful novel from the author of Star-Crossed and Truth or Dare.
Twelve-year-old Norah Levy has just completed two years of treatment for leukemia. The hospital social worker had gently tried to warn her that the transition back to "the healthy world" wouldn't be easy, but Norah had no idea how difficult it would be.
As Norah quickly learns, she immediately sees that in the two years she's been sick, everything has changed. Her best friend Maeli has joined a group of new friends, kids are starting to "date" (including Silas, the boy Norah used to ride bikes with), and everyone is looking and dressing older--except for Norah, still tiny and undeveloped as a side effect of chemo.
If that weren't enough, thanks to her tutoring while out of school, Norah is actually ahead of her seventh grade classmates academically, and is placed in some eighth grade classes. It doesn't help that her friends and classmates have no idea how to talk to her. Fortunately, most of the kids in eighth grade don't know about Norah's illness, and treat her like the smart, funny kid she is--so she keeps that info to herself. But even among her new friends, Norah still feels like she is caught in-between so many places in her life--and when her new friends learn the truth about her illness, Norah is forced to reconcile some hard truths about herself.