Paradise Manor is depressing - the smells are bad and the residents are old. Sunny would much rather be doing her volunteer hours at Salon Teo, but her teacher won't let her. Who says volunteering at a hair salon doesn't benefit the community?

But working with the Alzheimer's patients has a surprising effect on Sunny. Along with Cole, the grandson of one of the residents, she begins to see that the residents don't have much more choice about their lives than she does: what they eat, how they are treated by staff, even what they watch on television. So Sunny does what she can to make the residents happy - even if she has to sometimes break the rules to do it.

But when tragedy strikes at Paradise, Sunny's left to make the decision about whether or not to honour a promise that Cole made to his grandmother about her life?and her death.

Sunny's character is flawed but moral - both brat and saint - and representative of a teen well on her way to becoming a grounded adult, until fate interferes. In Sunny, author Sylvia McNicoll creates a character whose irreverent outlook will appeal to a wide range of teenage readers.

Sylvia McNicoll has written twenty-three books for children. Her novels have won the Silver Birch and the Manitoba Young Reader's Choice Award. In 2011 she won a City of Hamilton Book Award for YA fiction. She is currently the features editor for Today's Parent Toronto. She lives in Burlington, Ontario.

The book follows high school student Sonja (Sunny) Ehret as she stands trial for manslaughter. Every chapter alternates between last year (Sunny serving volunteers hours on an Alzheimer's ward), and this year (Sunny's manslaughter trial). So just how are the two connected? Well you have to pick up this uh-mazing book to find out! I actually read this book in less than a day as I could just not put it down.

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