FAMILY SECRETS

The ``secret'' comes out only a few pages into this story when Tracy, second daughter of the Stewart family, learns she that was adopted as a baby, a truth now revealed because her birth mother has died. The title's ``family'' refers not only to Tracy's ongoing reassessment of the word's meaning as she meets the people related to her birth mother, but to the Stewarts' move from Cambridge to Tracy's father's hometown on Massachusetts' North Shore. While still adjusting to her new knowledge, Tracy meets David, whose entire family was tragically killed the year before, and also other residents who look out for each other in small-town style. Tracy's ideas and definitions evolve right to the book's last line: ``...even if your real family isn't there, friends can be a kind of family too.'' Unfortunately, that sentence rings as hollow as others found in various crucial scenes, infusing the story with trivializing sentiment rather than with genuine reflection on familial love. (Fiction. 10+)