Book Review: Born Blue…

Can you imagine life where it's you for yourself. Where you have a dream that is all yours. At 15 you live almost on the street. All around you are addicts, people living on the edge, the only thing that keeps you going is your dream- to sing.

Born blue is a book about a girl who grows up through those hard times. Leeshaya as she changes her name to be. Starts off in a foster home with many other kids. She Her mom trades her for drugs. She looses her best friend. And through it all she sings. She sings like the ladies, Aretha, Etta, and Billie. When she was young she used to listen to them in the dirty basement of the foster home.

This book shows how for people go when they have a dream. The author focuses on the people and things going on that aren't talked about. The reader learns about struggles and how where you come from effects what people think about you. It shows all of the struggles some people have to go through to get out of where they come from so people can take them seriously.

If you read between the lines, as I did, you can see how easy it is to fall into a life style like leeshaya. But it doesn't take much to see how hard it is to get out. Especially when (like for leeshaya) you don't have any people who can show you how to act. This book is very well written and has good description. It makes you care about the character so you keep reading in hopes it has a good end. But I'm not going to ruin it for you. Your going to have to read it yourself.

This book made me think about how fortunate I am to have a family who loves me and cares. Also how lucky I am to have other people as good role models as well. It would be hard for me to live without them.


If your interested in reading this book or any other books by Han Nolan. These are other books by her:
Dancing on the Edge, The Canning Season, Shooter, M.C. Higgins, the Great, When Dad Killed Mom, A Summer of Kings, The First Part Last, Cut, Inexcusable

Doing this review made me think about what its like to fully summarize a book for other people. I can normally have my own opinions of what I think of a book but I don't say them out loud. It was kind of hard but it was easier to go off of a model of someone elses work and use their ideas for mine.