Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum

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Stars: *****

I recieved this book for review from Random House.
Wow. Received for review and I’m so glad. This is similar to A Far Cry From Home but mostly the story of one girl instead of many. I have not read Girlbomb which is the author’s story of herself homeless.

I liked how different people’s voices were shown as they said things instead of the author always saying, “Sam said, ‘……’ and then Valentina said, ‘….’” It made it more real to see the homeless girls talking in slang, gang talk or poor grammar. The girls names were crazy. I know names were changed to protect people but I wonder if these names were changed to unusual names on purpose or they really were this unusual. Amaryllis, Le Croix, St. Lucia…?? I guess some of them were gang names or nicknames too.

There is just something about the author’s writing style that makes her writing so easy to read and so hard to put down. When I was near the end of the book, I was falling asleep but I couldn’t put it down, not when I was so close to the end. It took me another hour and a half but I finished it. (Okay so I wasn’t THAT close to the end. I had more than 100 pages to go, but it was the best part.)

Even the blurb on the back of the book is written well. The part about a shocking discovery of how Sam was more troubled than anyone could have thought is what made me not able to stop reading. I really wanted to know what it was. All the way to that chapter that reveals the discovery, I was running ideas through my head trying to figure out what it could be. I was wrong. It’s much better when you can’t guess what happens next in a fiction novel but it doesn’t happen often in a memoir. What a shocker!

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About Kathleen

I've been a nonfiction lover for as long as I can remember. I love children's nonfiction as well and love to share my knowledge and the books I gained them from, with the world. I wish more people would give nonfiction a chance.