How to Save a Life
Sara Zarr

Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 9781409546757
Published: /90/2012
Price: £6.99

Book of the Week
Best-selling author Sara Zarr has written a contemporary story about love and loss, grief and survival, based around two seventeen year old girls from opposite backgrounds. Jill is the daughter of a well-to-do family but her life lost all meaning when her dad died. Friends, boyfriend, college - nothing matters any more. Then her Mum decides to adopt a baby.

Mandy, meanwhile, is 17, pregnant and leaving home, wanting nothing but a better future for her child.

The characters couldn't be more different and the book is written, very effectively, from both their perspectives as they come to understand their loss and grief and to find hope in themselves and in their future.

Synopsis:
From the best-selling author, Sara Zarr, comes the remarkable story of what it means to be a family, and the many roads we can take to become one. Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she's been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends - everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she's trying to replace a lost family member with a new one. Mandy Kalinowski understands what it's like to grow up unwanted - to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy falls pregnant, one thing she's sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. But will she ever find someone to care for her too? As their worlds change around them, Jill and Mandy must learn to both let go and hold on, and that nothing is as easy - or as difficult - as it seems.

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