Friday, February 25, 2011

Review: Mother Not Wanted

Hey guys, this is Sara Dawson. I hope I don’t scare you away because this is a guest blog. Timothy asked me to do this some time ago, but I’m not really that great of a writer, so I’ve been putting this off. I write what I have to for school and stuff, but it’s easier for me to just talk to people if I want them to know something. Anyway, Timothy asked me to read Mother Not Wanted and to write a review. Here goes.

I think the first thing you’re supposed to do in a review is to tell what the book is about. If not, you can just skip on down to after I tell you what it’s about. Mother Not Wanted begins with Amber and Lizi on a train to Fort Worth. That’s part of the reason I took so long to write this review. I don’t like trains and Timothy knows it. I had a bad experience with a train. I was on a train that derailed and it could have killed me. There was another girl who did die. But I’d rather not think about that. Amber and Lizi get off the train in Fort Worth and they go to Fox’s house. Which isn’t easy because they have to ride the bus and then they have to walk and then they find out he lives in a gated community and the guard won’t let them in.

I should probably tell you why Amber and Lizi are trying to get to Fox’s house. Lizi’s mother died when Lizi was very young. I can relate to that. Anyway, Amber has been taking care of Lizi, even though she knows that Lizi has family somewhere. After all these years, Amber has decided to find Lizi’s family, but she doesn’t know that much about them. She’s done enough of her homework to know that Fox is Lizi’s grandfather, but she doesn’t know which of his sons is Lizi’s father. She also doesn’t have much in the way of proof, so she decides to do what she’s always done—she fakes it. She has these fake birth certificates that have different names written in for father. But when she meets the family, she discovers that the women these two men married are different than the woman she knows to be Lizi’s mother. I’m telling you too much, aren’t I?

I loved this book. Maybe it’s because I see similarities between Lizi and me. I know what it’s like to grow up without one parent. Lizi was without both of hers, but she had Amber, so she was probably better off than she would’ve been if her mother had lived. Now, I’ve got Ellen, but that doesn’t keep me from wanting to know what my real mother was like. Lizi must have wondered what her parents were like during those years it was just her and Amber. But I think a lot of people will like this book.