Being Toffee Published by Bloomsbury Publishing by Sarah Crossan
on March 6, 2019
Genres: Abuse, Contemporary, Family & Relationships, Mental Health, Poetry, Realistic, YA
Pages: 399
Source: Netgalley
Format: ARC, eBook
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Goodreads
Find the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
ISBN: 1547603291
Rating:
The astonishing new novel from the incomparable, multi-award-winning and Laureate, Sarah Crossan.
I am not who I say I am, and Marla isn't who she thinks she is.
I am a girl trying to forget. She is a woman trying to remember.
Allison has run away from home, and with nowhere to live, finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there – and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past called Toffee.
Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be.
But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who am I, really?
I absolutely love novels in verse–there’s something about them that just make reading so much smoother.
Sarah Crossan is such a talented author, I can’t believe that I’ve never read her before and that it took me so long to get to this book!
Once I started this one, I really had a difficult time putting it down. What an amazing story with amazing characters!
I’m not sure if it’s the way the story was told or just the story, itself, but this was an emotionally moving book that I will be sure to read again.
About Sarah Crossan
Sarah Crossan is Irish. She graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Literature before training as an English and Drama teacher at Cambridge University and worked to promote creative writing in schools before leaving teaching to write full time.
She completed her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in 2003 and in 2010 received an Edward Albee Fellowship for writing.
She currently lives in NYC.
I am not a fan of novels in verse myself, but I love the idea behind this one and will definitely put it on a list to get ordered for my school library!
Lisa Mandina (Lisa Loves Literature) recently posted…Book Blitz with Giveaway: The Only Man (From Connemara With Love #4) by A.S. Kelly
Oh, I think that’s perfect! Even though you probably wouldn’t enjoy it, your students would! 🙂