The Lost Boy

By Dave Pelzer

In this sequel to A Child Called 'It', we follow Dave on his journey through the foster care system from the age of 12 until he turns 18. He goes through painful lessons along the way, including the difficult task of fitting into a family he can rely on. As soon as he becomes attached to the foster parents, he is torn away and moved into a new foster home.

This book is also a tribute to all foster parents; people who make a difference in a young person's life and shapes them forever on their path to adulthood. Although an uplifting story, it also shows how the actions of poster parents may trigger negative experiences from the past.

A book filled with tears, laughter, devastation and hope, but most of all a very inspirational story. It is a story that speaks to your heart, as it tells you of one child's struggle to thrive in life while facing extreme difficulties.

Coastliners

By Joanne Harris

'I returned after ten years' absence, on a hot day in late August, on the eve of summer's first bad tides. As I stood watching the approach from the deck of Brismand 1, the old ferry into La Houssinière, it was almost as though I had never left. Nothing had changed: the sharp smell of the air; the deck beneath my feet; the sound of the gulls in the hot blue sky. Ten years, almost half my life, erased at a single stroke, like writing in the sand. Or almost.'

Madeleine 'Mado' Prasteau was born and raised in the village of Les Salants on the beautiful island of Le Devin, just off the Atlantic coast of France. For the past 10 years she has been living in Paris with her mother, but when her mother dies she returns to the island to visit her father, GrosJean, whom she has had very little contact with over the last 10 years. GrosJean leads a very solitary life on the island, still grieving over his dead brother, P'titJean. Mado, being a bit of a tomboy, has always tried to fill the space of the son that GrosJean always wanted but never had.

Le Devin is made up of two rival villages, La Houssinière and Les Salants. In true Joanne Harris-style they are populated by very eccentric personalities! There is a neverending battle on the island against the tides and sand. The tides have brought a sandy beach to the village of La Houssinière and with it a few tourists and relative wealth. On the other side of the island the same tides threaten the very existence of the village of Les Salants.

The flooding and loss of sand in Les Salants is caused by the extension of a dyke in La Houssinière. It is the work of La Houssinière's richest businessman, Claude Brismand, whose link to Mado's father is only revealed at the end of the book. His change in the currents 3 years before has subtly rerouted the sand from Les Salants right to the front of his thriving hotel business. This causes Mado and another outsider, a charismatic Irish drifter named Flynn, who reluctantly becomes Mado's lover, to devise a plan to secretly build a reef in Les Salants and steal the beach back.

A very Joanne Harris-like book. A story shifting between family relationhips and community politics. Though a very good novel this is not one of her best.