Rating: WARTY!
Read acceptably by Kate Rudd, this audiobook version is about middle-grader Fern. She's the youngest child in the family apart from so-called "surprise baby" which is actually a toddler named Charlie, who's a bit like the Tiny Tim of this family, although he has no physical condition other than general snottiness and stickiness common to all such children. He's not really that much of a surprise given how wide-spread in age this family is. Fern is, quite frankly, a bit self-centered, spoiled, and whiney.
Her older sister Sarah might have been a more interesting subject. She's taking a gap year after high school, although she appears to be doing nothing with it since she's staying at home and working part time in the family restaurant, Harry's. The family is rounded out with Holden, who is gay and thinks no one knows it, and mom and dad, but dad is a jerk who is completely out in left field, and mom has to literally bribe the kids to get them to go along with his weird ideas about how to advertise his restaurant. His name isn't even Harry.
Despite his devotion to her, Fern is mean to Charlie, which is what made me think that when " tragedy strikes" and Fern is at fault, as the blurb tells us, the tragedy afflicts Charlie. It;s absolutely no spoiler whatsoever to reveal that Charlie dies and Fern feels responsible. Unoriginal and cynically, manipulatively pulling heart strings? Yes. Trite and pathetic? Definitely. It's another story written by a woman where the main female character has to have a guy come rescue her because she's nothing but a maiden in distress waiting for exactly that event for her life to be complete. Stick a Newbery in it. It's done to death.
