melissa5's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Despite detailing an immigrant childhood living with poverty, racism and the serious daily fears that even the simplest of infractions (committed by her) could get her entire family arrested and deported back to China, the author still manages to make her narrative a joyful one. Her discovery of the library and that she could get books for free was so relatable (as well as her love of special places in her house to get quiet time to read her favorite book series like The Babysitter’s Club). Her parents and her relationship with them, friends and issues at school are also universally relatable although I do not share the immigrant experience. There is so much humor and honesty in the author’s writing that there were some sentences I had to read more than once because they made me laugh so hard and others because I realized I had tears running down my face because I was so heartbroken for what she had gone through; it was something I’d gone through too. It’s a beautifully written book that does give an eye opening experience to the undocumented immigrant experience especially through a child’s eyes.

This book was excellently researched and while the author always has her sympathies firmly with the 6 child victims who died when their adoptive mother Jennifer Hart inexplicably drove the van they were all in off a cliff in California, killing them all, she elaborates on all the systemic failures that led to this tragedy while offering no easy solutions. In her attempts to locate the origins of the adopted sibling groups and to determine how they came to be placed with Jennifer and her wife Sarah Hart, it is evident that there are so many more victims in this story and that for the rest of their lives they will live with the grief of what they missed or what they could have done differently. It is heartbreaking to hear firsthand accounts and read documents from the birth families of the children who had hoped they were being adopted into loving homes that were better than they could provide as well as the families/friends of adoptive parents Jennifer/Sarah Hart. This book was so eye-opening in the way child custody laws work and how these birth mother’s lost the rights to their children. it was devastating to read the reports of the many visits made to the Hart home prior to this tragedy. I can’t stop thinking about this book and how many times this abuse is being repeated in adoptive and foster homes across the country but it’s the more secretive type….Abuse shouldn’t have to make the cover of magazines like this horrific incident did and result in the death of children for people to take notice.