Sophie and Carter

by Chelsea Fine
on a shelf paperback 119 pages
genre: YA realistic, relationships

I had purchased this for school but reconsidered . . . the fonts used are super hard to read and it looked as though it might be a too-mature book for middle school. So it sat on my "consideration" shelf for a long time until I finally started reading it during lunch breaks.

Then I brought it home to finish it. The content is serious, indeed, but not in the way I expected. Sophie's mom is a prostitute who is almost never home, leaving the high school senior responsible for her three younger siblings. This includes feeding them, making sure they get to school, do their homework, etc. Next door neighbor Carter was horribly abused by his father until he was big enough to fight back. Now Carter cares for his mother, a broken woman who is mentally ill.

Through their years of friendship, the two have fallen in love but it takes a while for them to realize it. On some levels, this is a really beautiful book about what love really is. In other ways, it is so trite. The likelihood of these two seventeen-year-olds to overcome such traumatic childhoods to be balanced, caring, healthy individuals is unlikely. That said, I'm trying to think of which kiddo would *love* this book and want to own it!