Genre: Young Adult / Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2019
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend
Synopsis: In 1965 seventeen-year-old Victoria, having just escaped an unstable home, flees to the ultimate place for dreamers and runaways - the circus. Specifically, the VanDrexel Family Circus, where among the lion tamers, roustabouts, and trapeze artists, Victoria hopes to start a better life.Fifty years later, Victoria's sixteen-year-old granddaughter Callie is thriving. A gifted and focused tightrope walker dreams of being a VanDrexel high wire legend just like her grandmother, Callie can't imagine herself anywhere but the circus. But when Callie's mother accepts her dream job at an animal sanctuary in Florida just months after Victoria's death, Callie is forced to leave her lifelong home behind.
Feeling unmoored and out of her element, Callie pores over memorabilia from her family's days on the road, including a box that belonged to Victoria when she was Callie's age. In the box, Callie finds notes that Victoria wrote to herself with tips and tricks for navigating her new world. Inspired by this piece of her grandmother's life, Callie decides to use Victoria's circus prowess to navigate the uncharted waters of public high school.
Across generations, Victoria and Callie embrace the challenges of starting over, letting go, and finding new families in unexpected places.
Review: Language and alluded sex make this young adult; but the writing and story would be appropriate for the middle grades. I don't know who this would appeal to as a result.
This is yet another novel written in alternating past and present timelines. Not surprising I was more into the 1965 timeline, rather than present day, and I'd love to read an adult version of that story by itself.
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