• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 8 to 12
• Reading age: 12 to 18

Colby Wyatt has had a rough year.

Colby's dad disappeared, she doesn’t have a place to live, and she’s addicted to meth. Thankfully, her best friend Gigi’s grandma takes her in, and Colby helps out with the family business, selling stolen goods in Gram’s pawnshop—stuff that Colby and Gigi along with Gigi’s brother Milo steal when they break into people’s houses, which Colby is pretty good at. Now she’s pregnant. Colby doesn’t tell anyone who the dad is. Instead, she checks herself into rehab so she can get clean and figure out how to keep the baby. Though Colby isn’t sure how to make a family, she’s determined to make things work, and she’s sure she can save Gigi too. But sometimes, no matter how hard you wish for something, it just doesn’t come true.

This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for teen readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Carrie Mac is an award-winning author who has moved too many times to count. For now, she lives in Pemberton, a very small town nestled in the mountains north of Vancouver. Carrie Mac's first novel The Beckoners won the Arthur Ellis YA Award, is a CLA Honour book, and is being adapted for film. Her contributions to the Orca Soundings series continue to get reluctant teens excited about reading. She is available for school and library presentations, and has been known to hold the interest of a couple hundred teens where others have failed. Maybe it's the tattoos.
www.carriemac.com

Carrie Mac's profile page

• Commended, In the Margins YA Fiction Titles
• Commended, CCBC Best Books for Kids & Teens

"The novel's quick pace and straightforward narration will appeal to reluctant teen readers as it pulls them immediately into Colby’s predicament. Mac treats the issues of teenage pregnancy, drug use, and homosexuality, with frankness. Nothing is glossed over or glamorized. Colby is a character to whom readers can easily relate to and with whom they can sympathize."

CM Magazine

"Mac manages to deftly incorporate a myriad of threads into this straight-forwardly written story...While you are rooting for Colby to clean up her mess of a life, you are also falling a little bit in love with Milo as he tries to be a support to Colby and their daughter, Luna. I could easily see this being a popular Orca Soundings title."

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