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Monday, August 18, 2008

Whale Song

Whale Song by Cheryl Kaye Tardif
Rating: 5 plus stars, amazing read =)

11-year-old Sarah and her parents Daniella (an artist) and Jack (a marine biologist) move to Canada from the states. Sarah is not happy about the move but she starts warming up when she sees their beautiful new house located right along the beach that has an amazing view. She's even more happy when she meets Goldie. The two quickly become best friends. Sarah loves Goldie's family, especially her grandmother who they call Nana most of the time. Goldie is of Indian descent (along with most of the other people in the town where Sarah is living) so Sarah learns all these new traditions
and tales from the past.

Sarah develops a crush on a boy in her class, Adam. She also gets majorly bullied by a girl in her class named Annie. But for the most part she likes her new home. She especially loves going out on the schooner with her parents and listening to the whales which are Sarah's and her mother's new love.

Not long after being in their new home Sarah's mom starts having fainting spells. And it turns out she has a rare condition that is slowly wasting her away. When Sarah finds this out she's devastated. But unfortunately there's nothing anyone can do for her mother. Her doctors only give her about two to three more years of life, max.

When Daniella ends up in a coma something happens and she dies. Jack (Sarah's father) is arrested for pulling the plug on the machines that were keeping his wife alive. Sadly after his long awaited court date the jury finds him guilty and he's sentenced to ten years in prison.

Sarah has to go back to the states with her grandparents and leave everything behind once again. She tries to block everything out that has happened to her back in Canada, even all the good things. But when she's older (in her 20's) someone comes along and opens her floodgates (so to speak) and she once again remembers everything, even how her mother died.

Okay so this was an incredibly hard book to write a summary of. So there's my crappy one, So much happens in this book it's hard to cover the basic things in a short summary. Just go read the book and you'll find out how amazing it is! It's completely heart wrenching because you know all along that Daniella is dying. But the whole book is just amazing. I seriously never wanted to put it down. Cheryl's use of words is amazing, like when she's talking about the killer whales or describing scenery. They just flow so easily across every page. My heart strings were being pulled the entire time and I absolutely loved it. If you like these type of books I seriously recommend getting yourself a copy. You seriously won't be disappointed. And yes I know I just overused the word seriously, sorry. =)

2 comments:

Cheryl Tardif said...

What a wonderful review! Thank you!! :)

May I quote part of your review on my website? And can you please post this to Amazon? :)

If you're looking for another novel to read, I think you'd really enjoy my 2005 thriller The River.

Also, one of my favorite reads is a novel by Lori Larsens titled The Girls.

Happy reading...and reviewing!

Cheryl

Carolina said...

Great review. This book does sound amazing. I'll try to get a copy somewhere. :)