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Mar 12, 2012Ubalstecha rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Leah's never known her father. Not because he left her mother before she was born, but rather because her mother was artificially inseminated by donor sperm from a man she never met. And for most of Leah's life, that's been fine. Even with her mom marrying her stepdad and having a kid. But then they move into the city, and Leah starts to wonder about her donor and if there are others like her around. This sets her off on a quest for information, one that leads her to start to hive off her life into sections, never sharing everything with anyone. But when the cracks begin to show, Leah must find a way to reconcile this new part of her with the rest of her life. Can she get her mom to understand her need for information? Author Courtney Sheinmel has twinned the age old teenage search for identity with the modern reality of artificial insemination. She has done so with humanity, rather than sensationalism. Readers will identify with the sense of isolation that Leah feels, because as one character points out, we all have something that makes us less than perfect, that sets us out from the group. This means that we all can understand each other's pain, even if we have never gone through the specifics. A good tween girl novel.