This Golden State
Marit Weisenberg
Summary: The Winslow family lives by five principles:
1. No one can know your real name.
2. Don’t stay in one place too long.
3. If you sense anything is wrong, go immediately to the meeting spot.
4. Keeping our family together is everything.
5. We wish we could tell you who we are, but we can’t. Please—do not ask.
Poppy doesn’t know why her family has been running her whole life, but she does know that there are dire consequences if they’re ever caught. Still, her curiosity grows each year, as does her desire for real friends and the chance to build on something, instead of leaving behind school projects, teams, and crushes at a moment’s notice.
When a move to California exposes a crack in her parents’ airtight planning, Poppy realizes how fragile her world is. Determined to find out the truth, she mails in a home DNA test. Just as she starts to settle into her new life and even begins opening up to a boy in her math class, the forgotten test results bring her crashing back to reality.
Unraveling the shocking truth of her parents’ real identities, Poppy realizes that the DNA test has undone decades of careful work to keep her family anonymous—and the past is dangerously close to catching up to them. Determined to protect her family but desperate for more, Poppy must ask: How much of herself does she owe her family? And is it a betrayal to find her own place in the world?
My Review: I first heard about This Golden State while reading the blog Forever Young Adult and let me just say, it did NOT disappoint. I absolutely gobbled this up. I will be the first to admit that the mystery/thriller genre is not one that I read often (if ever, I think the last one I read was Mexican Gothic, two years ago and that was only because of how popular it was but I digress). So I was guessing until everything was revealed. I loved Poppy as a character, she's whip smart, loves her family more than anything, but is also growing up and starting to question the way things are. One of my favorite things about the novel was the family dynamic, I loved how Weisenberg showed us a family that is tightly knit and multifaceted and realistic, especially given the situation. Overall I'd highly recommend this one, as someone who is always scared of everything, this one didn't scare me at all, but I was kept guessing until the end (someone who has more experience with mysteries and thrillers may not be) overall, I thoroughly enjoyed.
Recommended age: 13/14+ (some mild thematic elements, mild language)
תגובות