• Age: 15 to 18
• Grade: 11

Sixteen year old Alice is living in the shadows: the shadow of her mother’s death, continued rejection by her father and her aunt’s coldness. Will she ever know happiness again? Can she get past her secret torture? Alice is struggling to cope with the death of her mother, after a long debilitating illness. Her father has shut her out of his life and her aunt is only worried about her next spa appointment, and the two are conspiring to send her away. Her angst is so deep it cuts like knife. Will she ever feel whole again? Chloe is the only person who truly understands and when she becomes pregnant, Alice must look inside to find the strength to get them both out of their downward spiral. With the help of John, the caring bookstore owner who provides Alice’s escape, the girls devise a plan to live a life that excludes their self-absorbed parents. When they meet Caleb, a struggling artist, he introduces them to the creative and inspiring world of shadowboxes. Filled with heart-wrenching scenes and characters you will never forget, Shadow Boxing is a story of loss and love. Alice and Chloe each have a story of teenage struggle and finding their place in the world. The ultimate triumph of these two determined teens is an inspiration. Set in the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, the authentic and edgy dialogue will resonate with teens and their unique struggle to adulthood.

Sherie Posesorski is a Toronto-based author, editor and book reviewer whom is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Columbia University in New York, and a former editor for Harlequin Enterprises. She has had book reviews and personal essays in a variety of publications across Canada and in the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of a previous novel Escape Plans which was part of Coteau's best selling series, "In the Same Boat". She currently divides her time between Toronto and Florida.

Sheri Posesorski's profile page

• Short-listed, Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award

Reviewed By: Karen Huenemann Reviewed On: December 2009

The death of her beloved mother – especially in the face of her father’s insensitivity – is a hard situation for teenaged Alice. Alice does not deal with it well. Fortunately, Alice has her cousin Chloe, whose mother is as insensitive to her needs as Alice’s father. Together the two of them work to overcome their several problems. If “it takes a village to raise a child” Shadow Boxing ultimately reveals the strength of community necessary to raise psychologically healthy teenagers.

Posesorski creates truly human characters: her teens are fallible and problematic, yet innocent and engaging. Her adults represent a fair and sufficiently comprehensive cross-section of urban Canadian life. The one less-realistic strain in the text is the extent to which some of the adults in Alice and Chloe’s lives are willing to go to help the girls, but Posesorski works to validate their motivations… and is for the most part successful.

What is most compelling in the text is the depiction of Alice’s grieving process. Her experiences imbue the novel with bibliotherapeutic power, but the emotions are so strong, and so real, that this power should be used judiciously. Young readers having experienced such a loss recently might do well to wait before reading Shadow Boxing, but at some moment, for some people, this text could affect powerfully healing.