VVMBookBlog

Samantha is 13 and her father is an alcoholic.   And that causes lots of problems in her life.  She can never trust how her dad will act, so she can’t bring friends home, she always feels like she had to protect her little brother, and the whole situation has to stay a big secret.

But then she can’t take it anymore, so she chooses an older student she sees often in the library and starts sending anonymous notes to “Juliet” asking for advice.  As with many real-life problems like this, things can’t get better until they get worse. And that’s pretty much what the rest of the story is about, including the invitation to a high school party where alcohol gave Sam some problems, too.

Except for the part about choosing a complete stranger to share (by letter) all her secrets, I thought this was a pretty good story about a really difficult problem.  At the end of the book are several pages of resources for kids and teens experiencing problems with alcohol in their family.