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Summary
Summary
New York Times bestselling adult author Luanne Rice makes her dazzling YA debut with this gorgeous, unputdownable story of love, hope, and redemption.When Ruth Ann (Roo) McCabe responds to a text message while she's driving, her life as she knows it ends. The car flips, and Roo winds up in a hospital bed, paralyzed. Silent. Everyone thinks she's in a coma, but Roo has locked-in syndrome -- she can see and hear and understand everything around her, but no one knows it. She's trapped inside her own body, screaming to be heard.Mathilda (Tilly) is Roo's sister and best friend. She was the one who texted Roo and inadvertently caused the accident. Now, Tilly must grapple with her overwhelming guilt and her growing feelings for Roo's boyfriend, Newton -- the only other person who seems to get what Tilly is going through.But Tilly might be the only person who can solve the mystery of her sister's condition -- who can see through Roo's silence to the truth underneath. Somehow, through medicine or miracles, will both sisters find a way to heal?
Author Notes
Novelist Luanne Rice was born in Old Lyme, Connecticut on September 25, 1955. She has written over twenty books and her stories, such as Home Fires and Cloud Nine, depict average people in emotionally complex situations. Many of her novels have been adapted into TV movies including Crazy in Love (1992) which starred Holly Hunter, Bill Pullman and Gena Rowlands, and Blue Moon (1999) which starred Sharon Lawrence, Kim Hunter and Richard Kiley. She currently splits her time between New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Rice's YA novel begins with talented and beautiful 16-year-old Roo McCabe texting while driving, overturning her car, and winding up in a hospital, bloodied and paralyzed. Seemingly in a coma, she can see and hear everything, but can't respond in any way. She's filled with guilt and despair, while her 14-year-old sister and best friend, Tilly, on the other end of the text, blames herself for causing the crash. The sisters narrate the book in alternate chapters, with Pressley giving voice to Roo and Rudd portraying Tilly. Both actors do extremely well with the highly emotional story, which follows the sisters' reestablishment of communication and includes several rocky impediments, including Tilly's short-lived crush on Roo's boyfriend. The actors convey a genuine sense of teenage angst and ebullience and are just as successful in presenting the few adults-the girls' concerned mother, dedicated doctors, and a kindly and philosophical older woman whose dog was mildly hurt during the accident. Ages 12-up. A Scholastic/Point hardcover. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Teen sisters Roo and Tilly became even closer after the sudden death of their scientist father last year. With a widowed mother, the Connecticut family works at adapting to a new normal when tragedy strikes again. Roo, driving to pick up the impatient Tilly, responds to Tilly's text, attempts to avoid hitting a dog, and is suspended by her seat belt as her car flips over. What follows is an exploration into locked-in syndrome (the coma that is not a coma) and the profound power of sisterly love. The family's life, rich with a balance of scientific interest and artistic expression, adds depth to this journey into the understanding of disability, as Roo begins to develop communication mechanics. Rice, a best-selling adult author, employs alternating chapters in the sisters' voices with clarity and honesty in her YA debut. Without writing down to her audience, she stays firmly within the developmentally appropriate themes of young love, emotional confusion, and shifting friendships.--Bush, Gail Copyright 2016 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-High school junior Roo McCabe's life is full: she needs to choose a college, capture a scholarship-winning photo, and figure out if she still loves her boyfriend, Newton. But then, en route to pick up her sister Tilly, who is incessantly texting for updates on when she'll arrive, an exasperated Roo breaks protocol and replies. A swerve, a skid, and an end-over-end tumble result in paralysis compounded by locked-in syndrome. Told in alternating chapters and perspectives, Tilly's and Roo's individual journeys toward recovery finally join together, sealed with the healing gift of unconditional love between sisters. Kate Rudd (Tilly) and Brittany Pressley (Roo) provide solid narrations for all secondary characters, but each shines as her respective sister. Rice's YA debut with its timely don't-text-and-drive story line will give teens much to think about in relation to their texting habits. VERDICT A first-pick choice. ["A good purchase for libraries with teens craving realistic but not edgy fiction": SLJ 12/15 review of the Scholastic Point book.]-Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg City Schools, OH © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Nature, photography, sisterhood, and severe consequences for texting while driving. Sisters Roo, 16, and Tilly, 14, live right where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound. Between Roo's stunning photographs (of river, beaches, marshes, and people) and her off-the-charts academic test scores, she's a shoo-in for Yaleuntil one fateful day. Roo's late picking up Tilly; Tilly pesters her by text, demanding a response; Roo glances down to reply "5 mins away" and flips her car, ending up paralyzed and in a coma. The sisters alternate first-person narration. Via Roo's chapters, readers know long before her family and doctors that she's actually not in a comashe has locked-in syndrome and can't move, but she's fully sentient and as sharp as ever. Themes are plentiful and include guilt and confession; recovery (Roo uses a brain-computer interface to communicate and eventually take photos with her one mobile eye); boyfriends and loyalty; and, of course, the warning about texting while driving. Textual insistences that the sisters are best friends with an unbreakable relationship and that Roo's the most "special, luminous girl"both before and after paralysisare unduly explicit, and Tilly's voice is sometimes uncharacteristically florid. White characters are white by default, while characters of color are specified, stereotyped, and mainly present to supply support and wisdom. Choppy and an issue book to the core, though certainly effective on the texting-and-driving message. (Fiction. 12-15) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From The Secret Language of Sisters
Plenty of time, slowing more, thirty miles an hour, and I hit the numeral 5, and I look down directly at my phone to quickly type the next part: mins away. And I hit send just in time to look up and see that I have veered off the road onto the shoulder, where an old woman is walking her dog in the shadows, and I am going to hit them.
I see it all: she is wearing a black coat, and she has gray hair and glasses, and I don't know her name but I have seen her in the grocery store, and her dog is a Labrador retriever with a red collar and has darted after a blur that might be a squirrel, and the woman's eyes are wide open and so is her mouth, I can read her lips, Oh NO! And I have dropped the phone and I am yanking the wheel left as hard and fast as I can. The car turns, the bumper misses the lady by an inch, no more, and I feel a thud and my heart sickens because I know I have hit the dog.
I scream out, and I would do anything if I could turn back time just eleven seconds, just thirteen seconds, to save the poor dog, and the car spins around so fast, one circle then another, and I remember my father saying steer into the skid, which makes no sense, especially because now the car is somersaulting down the bank, the windows are smashing and glass is flying, just trying to breathe I gulp a piece of it down and have time to wonder if it will cut my insides, shred my throat and stomach, when the car lands in a place no car should ever land, nose down, on its roof, in the frozen creek.
I am hanging by my seat belt, I look around, and everything is quiet except the sound of rushing water. Only the stream is solid ice, it isn't moving at all. The only liquid is the hot river of my blood, and then the world goes away.
