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IF YOU LIVE LIKE ME by Lori Weber

IF YOU LIVE LIKE ME

by Lori Weber

Pub Date: April 15th, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-897550-12-0
Publisher: Lobster Press

High schooler and only child Cheryl has made move after move around Canada with her parents as her anthropologist father researches dying cultures. Now they’ve landed in Newfoundland to document the failing fishing industry. Embittered and withdrawn, Cheryl dresses Goth-like to scare away potential friends and irritate her parents. Her new neighbor, high-school senior Jim, is oblivious to her preemptive rejection. They share a common fate—“if you live like me”—to justify their divergent but similarly outsider lifestyles. When Cheryl reluctantly opens her heart, she finds new strength in herself, her parents and her community. The coastal Canadian setting is vividly realized, and Jim and Cheryl are mostly sympathetic characters. Jim, ever so sensitive and ambitious well beyond his peers, may be a bit too good to ring true. Cheryl, however, though often annoying, whines in proportion to her parents’ rather surprising, near-complete lack of understanding of her misery. Still, it’s an entertaining story that will engage many female readers with its satisfying depiction of a growing romantic relationship. (Fiction. 11 & up)