Best Girl. (Rapid Reads). Sylvia Maultash Warsh. Victoria, BC: Orca, 2012. 121 pp., pbk., $9.95. ISBN 978-1-55469-897-4. Grades 9 and up / Ages 14 and up. Review by Christina Pike. **** /4 Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

excerpt:

“You don’t know me,” she said. “I was a friend of your mother’s. She was a good person.”

“How do you know Shelley?”

“I mean your real mother.”

“What?”

“She asked me to give you something. Can I come by this afternoon?

“There’s some mistake. My mother died twenty years ago.”

“Is your birthday December third, nineteen eighty-seven?”

“How d’you know?”

“Your mother told me. Her name was Carol Allan. You were born Amanda Allan. You were adopted by Shelley and Stephen Moss. Carol… your mother and I worked together. We were friends.”

I was speechless. This was the first time I’d heard my birth mother’s name. Shelley always said the agency wouldn’t tell her who my parents were only they had died in a crash.

Then she said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you – Carol died last week. It was cancer. I’m so sorry.” There was a pause. “Please tell Shelley.”

Best Girl, by Slyvia Maultash Warsh, tells the story of Amanda Moss and her struggle to find out the truth about her birth parents and, at the same time, herself. On October 23, 2010, a phone call from a stranger turned Amanda’s life upside down. Everything that Amanda thought that she knew about herself was a lie. As Amanda tries to find out the truth, she discovers a brother she never knew and a passion for music she was given by her birth parents.

      In her novel, Warsh tells what seems to be a simply story, the quest for a true killer. As the main character moves towards the truth, Warsh creates many twists and turns to mimic Amanda’s confusion. Best Girl is a novel that addresses many themes including the value of family and the quest for identity.

Highly Recommended.

Christina Pike is the principal of St. Paul’s Junior High in St. John’s, NL.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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