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Sheila Deeth
, April 18, 2013
(view all comments by Sheila Deeth)
Forgiveness is rarely easy, and anger can feel like the only thing that’s real when the world falls apart. At least, that’s how it seems to Heidi’s friend Mae who tells her story in Jeffrey Blount’s Hating Heidi Foster. Fourteen-year-old Mae has just lost her father, and it’s all Heidi’s fault. Somehow in the course of being Mae’s best friend Heidi must have made Mae’s father love her more than Mae. That has to be it, because Mae's Dad saved Heid and now Mae and her mother are all alone.
Grandparents help with wise advice and hugs, real and virtual. A lovely friendship develops between Mae and her father’s mother as they chat over the internet. But Vballqueen turns into The Tragic One, and can’t even make the volleyball team anymore. Meanwhile all Mae’s teachers and friends are comforting Heidi.
Mae hugs her anger close. She hates Heidi. She’s angry with her Dad. And she’s betrayed by everyone else. Wise words don’t help and time doesn’t heal, but a chance revelation might change her point of view when the time is right.
Written with a beautifully consistent voice, Hating Heidi Foster is a startlingly real depiction of grief, deeply evocative and haunting. But it’s also a tale of the friendship, memory, communication, and forgiveness. The healing revelation may seem a little too easy, but truly it's almost inevitable; at the right time, something, somewhere, somehow has to give. The reader’s simply glad that healing comes in time for friendship to survive.
Disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book and asked for my honest review.
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