Read This: "Far From the Tree"

A long time ago Tiffany reviewed Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway. I finally got around to reading it and thought it was the cutest thing ever. Maybe because I had a teeny baby at home and the book ends with tiny baby Emmy and tiny baby Oliver seeing each other in the hospital nursery for the first time and I melted into a puddle imagining my tiny baby Theo having already seen his future love in the hospital nursery and thinking about them growing up together. It doesn’t help that there are two girls in his class at daycare and they were all born on the same day, at the same hospital, and their names all start with T, and hormones have made me an over-sentimental mess. But I digress. The point is, the book was so adorable that it made me want to read more of Ms. Benway’s books, and so I picked one called Far From the Tree and it was nothing like Emmy & Oliver but it was so good and you all should read it.

A contemporary novel about three adopted siblings who find each other at just the right moment.

Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs.

And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.

All the Feels

Reading a book that begins with a teenage girl giving up her baby for adoption is maybe not the best idea when you have a brand new baby at home that you waited many years for. The way the author dealt with such a heartbreaking decision was so realistic and left me hurting for Grace and thinking about this book even when I wasn’t reading it.

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And that was just the first chapter. Even if you aren’t overly hormonal, you will feel all the feelings, from the beginning of the book to the end. This book deals with so many real issues that surround adoption, the foster care system, race, family, and adolescence, but does so in a way that is realistic and respectful. Which brings me to the next reason you should read it…

Not Your Typical YA

I am a sucker for good, typical Young Adult fiction, but I think one of the reasons I loved this book so much is that it is so different from what you would expect. It’s not a story about young adults falling in love. Not that there isn’t a love interest, but there is so much more. It’s about family, and siblings, and trust, and relationships, and having your heart broken by more than just your high school love interest. I wish I had a better word to describe it, other than it’s just really REAL. Robin Benway does an excellent job using this fictional story to make the reader think about real issues. Far From the Tree will leave you asking yourself the hard questions, like what you would do as one of the main characters, or as one of the parents, or how we as a county need to address the issues of adoption and our foster care system, and how we can make a difference in the life of one of the over 400,000 children in foster care in our country. Having numerous friends who have fostered and adopted, this is a topic that I think is so important, and is one that this book depicts so genuinely.

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