Twelve-year-old Hopes life is turned upside down when her older sister, Lizzie, becomes an elective mute and is institutionalized after trying to kill herself. Hope and Lizzie have relied on each other from a young age, ever since the death of their father. Their mother, who turns tricks to support her family, is a reluctant and unreliable parentat best. During the course of this lyrical and heartbreaking narrative from an exceptionally promising YA voice, readers will discover the chilling reason why Lizzie has stopped speakingand why Hope is the only one who can bring the truth to light and save her sister.

 

 

This book is the winner of numerous awards

This book is part of a book series called Paula Wiseman .

This book is aimed at children at US 9th grade+.

This book has been graded for interest at 14-18 years.

There are 496 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2010 by Simon & Schuster .

Carol Lynch Williams grew up in Florida but now lives in Utah with her husband and seven children. She has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and helped develop the conference on Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers at Brigham Young University.