My heart broke for Wren as she navigated this difficult situation and felt like she couldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening because she was afraid she would just make things worse for her mother (or for her relationship with her mother). She has no frame of reference for a drug addiction, so there is no reason for her to jump to this conclusion. Even though Wren misses clues (clues that I, as an adult, found obvious), it always seems reasonable that she might miss them.

Then there’s the fact that her mom is lying to her about a lot of things I appreciated the fact that Wren realizes on some level that things aren’t right at home, but she can’t quite figure out what’s going on. At the same time, she realizes that her mother is rightfully hurt, and Wren feels like she has to tread very carefully with her mom because of that. But to Wren, he’s still her father and she loves him despite what he did to hurt her mom. It would have been easy for Dee to draw Wren’s father as the stereotypical bad guy here-he is cheating on his wife, after all. Her sense of guilt and confusion over her parents’ divorce and the fact that she actually kind of likes her stepmother is palpable.

I think what I loved most about this book is how believable Wren’s thoughts and feelings are. Violets Are Blue is an incredibly realistic middle-grade depiction of a child dealing with a recent divorce and a mother’s downward spiral into depression and addiction. And after an opening night disaster leads to a heartbreaking discovery, Wren realizes that her mother has a serious problem-a problem that can’t be wiped away or covered up.Īfter all the progress she’s made, can Wren start over again with her devastating new normal? And will she ever be able to heal the broken trust with her mom?

And what’s worse, Wren keeps getting hints that things aren’t going well at her new job at the hospital, where her mom is a nurse. She’s taking a lot of naps, starts snapping at Wren for no reason, and always seems to be sick. And things seem to fall into place when Wren meets potential friends and gets selected as the makeup artist for her school’s upcoming production of Wicked. So, when Wren and her mom move to a new town for a fresh start, she is cautiously optimistic. A girl whose parents aren’t divorced and doesn’t have to learn to like her new stepmom. A girl who isn’t in a sort-of-best friendship with someone who seems like she hates her. When she is experimenting with new looks, Wren can create a different version of herself. Twelve-year-old Wren loves makeup-special effect makeup, to be exact. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction!įrom the author of the acclaimed My Life in the Fish Tank and Maybe He Just Likes You comes a moving and relatable middle grade novel about secrets, family, and the power of forgiveness. Today, I have a MG contemp, a MG contemporary fantasy, a YA dystopian, and a MG contemporary in verse.

Violets Are Blue by Barbara Dee