Robin Merrow MacCready

When Kendra spots her father at an outdoor concert with a woman not her mom, she can't believe it, but after calling him and seeing him answer, she's knocked completely off kilter. He says he's in Boston at a conference, but she knows that's a lie. It forces her to question her idyllic family life and exacerbates her panic attacks that began when she nearly drowned during a storm while on a boat when she was much younger.
What ensues is her trying to deal with her confusion and hurt by show more hooking up with a boy and getting very drunk one night. In the harsh hungover reality of the next morning, she must confront her father as well as her mother to discover sufficient truth to stabilize her life. What she learns is nothing she could have imagined and comes with an unexpected bonus. show less

A stunningly real juvenile/young adult novel about a teenager struggling with her mom's alcoholism and disappearance. Her own devolving mental health and obsessive behaviors are completely realistic and expressive. The only unrealistic part of the book was the ending, which I won't spoil for you, but it seems that things would really not end up that way in the real world. Maybe the author really wanted to end on a hopeful note?
Anyway, this is recommended for youngsters struggling with an show more alcoholic parent, teens who want to understand what a friend in that situation is going through, and adults who'd like more insight into the mind of a teen child of an alcoholic. show less

2007 - Best Young Adult Edgar AwardIt becomes obvious what is going on about a third of the way through, but Merrow MacCready has so deftly crafted this chilling character study that I found myself unable to put it down. She has captured Claudine's journey through the trauma of alcoholism and codependency perfectly.

Cover blurb: How deep do you have to dig to bury your past?
Careful planning and constant control are Claudine's protection. Order is her weapon. She's long buried her own needs and dreams to cover for her alcoholic mom. But when Mom suddenly disappears - on another alcoholic binge? - seventeen-year-old Claudine finds herself all alone, and a much darker reality emerges from beneath years of angry denial and enabling behavior. And as the truth comes closer to the surface, Claudine must dig show more for the answers she's always worked so hard to cover up.

The art design for this is quite effective. The cover shows an array of post-it notes in different colours, with tasks written on them, some ordinary (call Liz, get more soda) others more unsettling (vacuum everything, eat breakfast, give rug stains another try) and a small gap where the title and a girl's eye are visible. Each chapter heading has a list of tasks, at first on torn notebook pages, then on post-its, more and more tasks each time.

I'm a bit of a sucker for kids-coping stories, whether the positive Boxcar Children style, or the darker Tillerman type. This is definitely the Tillerman end of the spectrum, though there are hints that the ending will be darker than it turns out to be.
Claude is the classic Good Kid and enabler for her mother, and the frustrated affection between them is well-portrayed, as is the slipping of her coping mechanisms as the story goes on. It didn't grip me to the extent that Homecoming or A Solitary Blue did, but it was a quick and engaging read. show less