Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Ginny Moon

This story was infuriating to read, which was the point. I can’t remember the last time I read a book that set up a situation that made me so angry.

Ginny Moon is an autistic teenager with intellectual disabilities. As a nine-year old, she was taken from the home of her abusive and neglectful mother and put into foster care, and now five years later she lives with her “Forever Parents,” the couple who have recently adopted her. Her parents are expecting a baby, and tension over how Ginny will handle the birth of her little sister exacerbates the problems that have plagued her through a series of supposed “forever” parents. Ginny has never been able to let go of her desire to track down her biological mother, and despite periods where she seemingly complied with the demands of her parents, social workers and therapist, she has learned to lie, steal and trick her way into getting what she wants. When the opportunity to contact her mother arises, Ginny takes it, and that sets off a series of events that threaten to destroy Ginny’s chance at a stable life.

Without getting into spoiler territory, it is difficult to talk about what is really going on with Ginny in this book. There is a mystery to her childhood with her mother and the reason she wants to return to what was a horrifically abusive situation, and what that mystery is actually about shifts over the course of the story. This was actually one of the flaws of the book to me - while the mystery was good, the way it was dragged out and the fact that the people around Ginny couldn’t figure it out despite it being painfully obvious past a certain point weakened the overall story. The author was already doing a great job depicting how Ginny’s disability and trauma reactions, and the impossible demands of the neurotypical world on her, made it difficult for her to connect and communicate with people. We didn’t need an improbable mystery too.

Ginny is a terrific character. The story stays in her POV, and the author doesn’t compromise on that. Ginny sees the world in a unique way due to her disabilities and trauma. There are things she doesn’t understand, and others that she understands better than the people around her. There are times when being in Ginny’s head is frustrating because it is so easy to sympathize with her situation and you want her to take the path of least resistance so that she can be safe, but there are reasons for everything Ginny thinks and does that are so clear from her perspective. She is heroic in her way, and it can be infuriating that the reader sees what the adults around her do not. The intersection of her disabilities and trauma, the way she is both brutally honest in some ways while prone to lying because she has been taught the limits of trust by her life experiences, make her very difficult for others to deal with, but what I loved about this book is that it never blames Ginny for how difficult other people find her. Yes, she does things that are unfair and dishonest and sometimes even cruel, but you always understand why and are angry on her behalf that the adults around her, who should know better, treat her more as a problem to be solved than a child in pain. It can be easy for stories like this to sympathize with adults, like Ginny’s worried adoptive parents or her well-intentioned therapist, but Ludwig doesn’t do that. While he makes it clear that Ginny frustrates, angers and frightens the adults around her, they aren’t given a pass. Ultimately Ginny is constantly being failed by both individuals and systems, and her own complicity in her problems doesn’t excuse it.

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moniipeters's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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laheath's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ginny is a young, teenager with autism who has been adopted by a patient couple after living in several, less than ideal foster homes. It has been almost five years since her birth mother lost custody of her due to drug use, neglect, and abuse. As Ginny talks about her school friends and her forever family, speaks with her therapist, and recalls previous events with her birth mother and various foster parents. the reader learns about the struggles she has faced in a world she does not understand, living with people who do not understand her. It's a heartbreaking story that was hard to put down and will stay with me. I just felt that the ending was rushed.

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