I'll Be There

I'll Be There

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Romance

Synopsis:  Sam Border wishes he could escape.  Raised by an unstable father, he's spent his life moving from place to place.  But he could never abandon his little brother, Riddle.

Riddle Border doesn't talk much.  Instead, he draws pictures of the insides of things and waits for the day when the outsides of things will make sense.  He worships his older brother.  But how can they leave when there's nowhere to go?  Then everything changes.  Because Sam meets Emily.

Emily Bell believes in destiny.  She sings for her church choir, though she doesn't have a particularly good voice.  Nothing, she feels, is mere coincidence.  And she's singing at the moment she first sees Sam.

Everyone whose path you cross in life has the power to change you-sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in ways greater than you could have know.  Beautifully written and emotionally profound, Holly Goldberg Sloan's debut novel explores the idea of human connection.

From the book jecket

Review:   This was an intriguing story of Sam and his brother, Riddle, who are basically homeless and forced to fend for themselves, and Emily who falls for Sam quite quickly.  If you want to break this story down the basics, It's basically a love triangle story with drama and adventure thrown in.  But it is more than that as well.  It's heart wrenching to read about Sam and Riddle and the way their dad treats them and how they live.  But the story gives you hope when Sam and Emily fall for each other and Emily's family meets Sam and his brother.  You want everything to work out but then comes Sam and Riddle's father who is unstable to say the least.  I devoured this book (after getting through the first few pages which did not grab me) and could hardly put the book down.

Rating: 4 stars