e-Audio, 08:18:05
Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Robbie Daymond, & Julie BuxbaumRelease Date: May 7, 2019Published by: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read from: August 9-14 & 20-23, 2019Stand-aloneSource: LibraryTW: anxiety/panic attacks, medical conditions (lung tumor), mentions of Sept. 11thFor fans of: Contemporary, Romance, Realistic Fiction, YA
Sometimes looking to the past helps you find your future.
Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: in the picture, Abbi (aka “Baby Hope”) wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing.
Now, fifteen years later, Abbi is desperate for anonymity and decides to spend the summer before her seventeenth birthday incognito as a counselor at Knights Day Camp two towns away. She’s psyched for eight weeks in the company of four-year-olds, none of whom have ever heard of Baby Hope.
Too bad Noah Stern, whose own world was irrevocably shattered on that terrible day, has a similar summer plan. Noah believes his meeting Baby Hope is fate. Abbi is sure it’s a disaster. Soon, though, the two team up to ask difficult questions about the history behind the Baby Hope photo. But is either of them ready to hear the answers?
*MY THOUGHTS*
I was super excited to read this book because I have a weird connection with the names presented in this story. Pair that with me also liking her other books, I knew it was a MUST that I read this one too.
Abbi is a baby when one of the most important things that ever happened to her happened. A picture is taken of her and other people while one of the towers from the World Trade Center is falling right behind them. The media made the photo iconic and the world knew her as Baby Hope. And that’s who she’s been all her life. Soon she wants nothing more than people to not know this about her, so she goes to a summer camp as a counselor where no one knows who she is. Except for one person… Noah who has spent his entire life trying to figure out more about this photo….
I knew this book was going to bring up some emotions due to the subject matter. And that’s exactly what it did. I remember listening to the end of this and my eyes began sweating. And for one of the characters I didn’t even care for. Buxbaum has a way of connecting you to the story through more than just the characters.
When I say there was one character I didn’t care for, I meant Noah. I didn’t like the way he treated Abbi in the beginning and I didn’t like the way Abbi just let it happen. I get what he was trying to do, but doing it at the expense of someone else (especially someone in Abbi’s condition) I didn’t feel that she should have forgiven him. Abbi was just ok though. She was honestly kind of flat overall. Nothing really stood out for her and I felt like she only was ok with Noah because she felt she didn’t have a choice. And that disappointed me.
The plot was pretty fast moving though. I liked the way they spoke with all the people they could in the photo. It was nice to see how different everyone’s perception was and how they’ve handled things as their lives went on. It will be interesting to see teens, who might not have seen this happen, feel about this story and how everyone interacted vs adults who have and might have a different connection to this story.
This was a great book to use to spark up some conversations, but I would definitely add a content warning. This book shows a budding romance that grows over a photo that depicts the terrible events from September 11th. But even still, it doesn’t romanticize the event, just the fictional photo. Definitely a job well done from Julie Buxbaum.
Overall, I give this
I loved this one, too. Noah definitely was very persistent to get his story out no matter how uncomfortable it was making Abby. Still, this was one of the good ones.