Saturday, September 02, 2006

Book Review: Store-Bought Baby by Sandra Belton (Greenwillow, 2006)

Although her parents call Luce’s death an accident, Leah thinks she knows the truth—Luce meant to kill himself by driving too fast on a rain-slicked road. Soon, finding the whole truth becomes Leah’s purpose when she searches for Luce’s birth parents. Along with her best friend and Luce’s girlfriend, Leah follows the trail to the Rock-a-Bye agency where Leah discovers that only family and friendships can heal her loss.

Despite the use of a first person narrative, I never knew as much about Leah as I did about the all-too-perfect Luce. As an adoptive parent myself, I thought the neighbors’ comments about adoption seemed too abundant after sixteen years to be realistic, and the book title was never fully supported by the text.

Teenagers will empathize with Leah’s yearning to know that she is as important to her parents as Luce was. The relationship she develops with her mother is satisfying.

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