Friday Never Leaving

I admit - this novel took me a long time to get through. But once I hit the second half a month into the book, I couldn't put it down and finished it at four in the morning, putting it down only to eat dinner and get ready for bed. This novel made me feel. It felt like I was one of the crew, one of the lost kids in the novel who were fighting for their survival, living together as a dysfunctional family. I smiled, I laughed and I cried ugly tears. Friday Brown just recently lost her mother to cancer, her father having never been a part of her life. She is sent to live with her cranky old grandfather, and leaves almost instantly, determined to keep the nomadic lifestyle she had with her mom, and find her dad. But her plan goes astray when another teenager, Silence, finds her at the train station and whisks her away. Here begins Friday's journey with a hodgepodge of other teenagers living on their own. Eventually the novel brings the crew to an abandoned city in the middle of nowhere where the book really picks up. Knowing the background that the author brought in during the first half of the novel, we see the true colors of most of the characters during the second half of the novel when things really get going. But no spoilers here, just a reminder to keep with this book through the beginning, it's worth it to get to the good stuff. While the very end confused me a bit, and I feel I might have missed something with taking so long to read this novel, I have no qualms against rereading Friday Never Leaving to put all the pieces together. I can't say that about very many novels I've read in my lifetime.