‘Echo’s Sister’ by Paul Mosier is a realistic and heartwarming story that truly gets to the heart of the matter. Twelve-year-old El is the main character, and even though she has planned for her first day of seventh grade to go off without a hitch, she comes home to devastating news – her younger sister is very ill and in the hospital. El comes to learn that her sister, Echo, has a rare form of cancer, and life as she knows it disappears, giving way to worry, doubt, and a host of other emotions that no adult, let alone pre-teen, should have to deal with on a regular basis.
El and Echo are pretty close, but El finds it increasingly difficult to keep up the charade of being positive about Echo’s treatments and how everything will turn out in the end. Her parents do their best to make everything as easy as possible, but nobody is perfect, and even they have their moments when El sees that she is not the only one being affected by this horrible turn of events.
Even though she feels her schoolwork is slipping, she finds some solace in art, and also in the comfort of her English class. Her attempts to make friends fall short, as she does her best to navigate the murky waters of middle school while doing her utmost to hide her home life. So many young people do this nowadays, and that is where Mosier’s writing shines the brightest – in showcasing the truth of the situation and how people are dealing with issues like these every day and trying to find the ways that work best for them to cope. When a boy named Octavius befriends her, she finds out that he is not so different from her, and while this should be comforting, it scares her in ways she doesn’t fully understand. Their relationship as friends is one that relates the innocence of youth along with the hardships of people who have encountered too much upset in their lives at such a young age.
Paul Mosier has written a beautiful and touching story that will pull on heartstrings, bring tears to readers’ eyes, and shed light on topics that too sadly have a stigma about them. This book comes highly recommended!
You can find ‘Echo’s Sister’ by Paul Mosier here.
*Review originally posted at YABooksCentral.com*