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14th out of 15 books
—
4 voters
The Blind Faith Hotel
by
Pamela Todd
When her family falls apart, fourteen-year-old Zoe feels like her whole world is going to pieces. Zoe's mother takes her kids away from their father, a fisherman who ships out to Alaska, and moves them to a run-down farmhouse she's inherited in the Midwest. Zoe's stuck -- in more ways than one.
Surrounded by strangers and a sea of prairie grass, she loses her bearings. A
...moreHardcover, 320 pages
Published
October 7th 2008
by Margaret K. McElderry Books
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Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com
Zoe has always had a love affair with nature. Growing up on the Northwest coast and spending all her free time with her father on his fishing boat, practically made her one with the sea. When her mother and father separate and her mother drags her halfway across the country to the Midwestern plains, Zoe thinks her world has come to an end.
Why do they have to move? They've moved a lot in the past several years, but that's been movin...more
Zoe has always had a love affair with nature. Growing up on the Northwest coast and spending all her free time with her father on his fishing boat, practically made her one with the sea. When her mother and father separate and her mother drags her halfway across the country to the Midwestern plains, Zoe thinks her world has come to an end.
Why do they have to move? They've moved a lot in the past several years, but that's been movin...more
Fourteen-year-old Zoe is forced to move to the Midwest when her mother separates from her father. She has a very hard time adjusting as she's always been near the waters of Washington state and there's nothing but grass and trees in the Midwest. Leaving her father behind isn't easy, either. And there's an additional problem: she has no breasts.
This is where it gets a little weird. Zoe tries to talk to her older sister, then her mother and a family friend. But no one seems to have the time or the...more
This is where it gets a little weird. Zoe tries to talk to her older sister, then her mother and a family friend. But no one seems to have the time or the...more
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Example #2 Zoe’s Dad is absent from the family
Book Information Title: The Blind Faith Hotel; Author: Pamela Todd; Place of Publication: New York, New York; Date: 2008; Pages: 312
Evidence for Evaluation: Zoe is a 14 year old girl who is moving from town to town with her mother, father, and siblings. Until, one move, her father does not go along. Zoe misses her father terribly and does not always relate to her mother or older sister. She is having a hard time finding someone to listen to her probl...more
Book Information Title: The Blind Faith Hotel; Author: Pamela Todd; Place of Publication: New York, New York; Date: 2008; Pages: 312
Evidence for Evaluation: Zoe is a 14 year old girl who is moving from town to town with her mother, father, and siblings. Until, one move, her father does not go along. Zoe misses her father terribly and does not always relate to her mother or older sister. She is having a hard time finding someone to listen to her probl...more
Zoe's relationship with her fisherman father is a close one. The book shares the wisdom he has passed on to her about the sea while they go out on his boat in the San Juan Islands. It is surprising how realistically bratty she is when her mother moves the family to the prairie and leaves Zoe's father. The reader learns to love the prairie along with Zoe as her life changes and she adapts to her new environment. The book explores growing up and dealing with love and loss. There is one scene that...more
Nov 26, 2008
GirlwiththeBraids
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to GirlwiththeBraids by:
BookDivas at CollectiveX
All of her life, Zoe has never had a real home. One year after the other, her family packs up their things and moves on. Her father had always been her role model by being a fisherman. He knew and explained things differently then others did, but when the family is separated by divorce, Zoe starts doubting everyone. Zoe, her older sister, younger brother, and mother move away once again, to a run down house they plan to fix up to become a bed-n-breakfast. While there, Zoe goes through puberty an...more
I found this book at the back of my book shelf so i decided to give it a chance. This book was very sad and i don't like how depressing the characters were, but at times the author was very descriptive of the environment and how it affect the characters, and I liked that, because it makes me feel like i can understand them. I feel the characters could have been more energetic and more cheerful because reading this book was very sad and lonely, so if there was more comedy or energy it would have...more
Zoe, 14 (almost 15!), does not understand why her mother is moving them to the Midwest. Without their father. They've lived in the Pacific Northwest, on the ocean, for Zoe's whole life. She loves the ocean, boats, the damp ocean air -- and her father. But when you are 14 and your family moves, you move, too. After a little run-in with the law, Zoe is given community service work at the prairie nature reserve, where she begins to learn about the ocean of prairie that now surrounds her. Where she...more
Books like this make up for all the Gossip Girl waste clogging the shelves in my Young Adult Fiction collection at the library. A tear-jerking, meditative and lyrical novel telling the story of Zoe, a 14 year old girl, her siblings, Nelia, 17, and Ollie, 6, their mother, Annie. The family leaves the west coast, and father, Daniel--a life long crab fisherman--and heads to Illinois, where Annie grew up on the Midwest Prairie, to rehab an old family house and open a bed and breakfast. Annie is exci...more
Zoe, Nelia and Oliver are bidding good bye to their sailor father who Zoe adores- he is heading on a fishing boat to Alaska, they are heading to the midwest to fix up their mother's family home and create a bed and breakfast hotel. The kids are leery, who would want to stay with us? they wonder.
When they arrive, the old house is in ruins- as they fix it up, find friends and move on with their life, Zoe has to come to terms with who her dad really is, why her mother would choose to move on in her...more
When they arrive, the old house is in ruins- as they fix it up, find friends and move on with their life, Zoe has to come to terms with who her dad really is, why her mother would choose to move on in her...more
it had such promise! i guess i was hoping for a "remodeling the run down mansion to turn it into a bed and breakfast book" or even "as the house is remodeled so is the soul" or "the life and times of the crazy guests who visit the bed and breakfast." alas, it is none of these things. it's just your basic "preteen is afraid of the changes her body is going through and upset about her parents divorce" book. if you're reading it waiting for the bed and breakfast to open, be warned- it doesn't until...more
A wonderful novel for young people, but for adults too. A coming of age story with an odd-girl-out main character who's plucked out of her element--the Pacific Northwest, to move to her mom's midwestern hometown where she has never been. At first everything seems like a bad fit, and her prickly relationship with her mom and sister seems likely to combust. But she grows to love the prairie landscape, mostly makes peace with her family and discovers a lot of strength in herself. Beautifully writte...more
I got involved with the main character, but I found this uneven. As noted by others the pacing here isn't consistent. I also felt as if the author was trying to hard--the gushing reviews on the back may speak to adults, but I'm not sure if a lot of this is going to reach the teens it's destined for. I also found the ending abrupt and unsatisfying.
Jan 07, 2010
Catherine Mustread
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Catherine by:
Great Lakes Book Award; Green Earth Book Award '09
Uneven -- two stars for first part, 4.5 for the last, very slow starting and the 14-year-old protagonist, Zoe, is so wrapped up in her misery that it was easy for me to feel more sympathy for her mother. Of course, I am an adult. Still found this to be a good coming-of-age, deal with your problems and move-on kind of book. An emotional family story about finding one's way through life with themes of relationships, forgiveness, honesty, and as a bonus an environmental theme too. I'd compare this...more
Interesting start, but the plot progressively dwindled. Zoe started out as being a very strong-willed, compassionate girl but further actions led me to think less and less of her. Nice writing style and emotion, but lacked a good story line and development of the characters.
I could relate to Zoe in the fact that she fights with her mom a lot and wants to be almost anywhere except where she is now. I hated the end though. I want to know who the man on the porch was, her dad or her boyfriend. THAT was irritating.
Zoe is a fourteen year old girl. She has three siblings and her mother takes them away from their father going from state to state. When they finally move to this old house she goes out and feeds the birds every morning. On her first day of school she meets some friends that thinks she is crazy. There is a man named Billy that is helping fix up the house that falls in love with her mother.
Technically I shouldn't mark this book as read since I didn't finish it. I wanted to learn about the Ivy character but honestly I didn't feel like reading another 40 chapters about some girl whining and complaining while watching a vulcher with stolen binoculars.
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I loved the setting and the characters, especially Zoe. Wasn't as fond of the dream sequences, but otherwise it was a really solid novel for younger teens, with a great focus on family dynamics.
Awesome! It's books like these that give me more faith in humanity. This book is kinda tragic. For this little girl, sorry, almost 15 year old to have to go through all the moving, and the parents splitting up, and having a mother that isn't really a great mother or who doesn't have the time to be one, which I can relate to sometimes. And I would DIE. Period. If I was moved to some some little house on the prairie. I mean, having to deal with people that have never seen an ocean?! SAVAGES!!! And...more
This book was fine, the biggest problem I had with it was that there just wasn't enough tension to keep the story moving forward at a good clip. Also, the pace of the story was inconsistent--what I mean is for some sections, descriptions were given on a daily basis for a number of days in a row, then in other parts, the story jumps forward by months without much description.
A teen girl trying to deal with her parents split as he mother moves them back to her hometown. Uninspiring and just too much 'same old stuff' going on in this story. The most interesting part too me is it starts out in Washington a place I know and love.
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I liked the main character, and I was interested in her journey at the outset, but I didn't stay engaged throughout the book.
Read this with a whole stack of young adult trying to find good books for Katie. it was OK. guess i can no longer relate!
I felt the story took a lot of set up and then didn't go anywhere. . .not sure who the audience would be for this one.
Some wonderful parts, and some parts that didn't ring true...but definitely worth the read.
I haven't read this in a while but I remember at the time that I disliked the ending a lot.
really good and truthfully told. recommend it to al..but its sad, if your a softie dont read it!!!
Very nice story. I wasn't sure what to think about the ending, but I guess the reader is free to imagine who comes back.
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“She looked at him and realized that she loved him, out of nowhere, pure and simple. She loved him: this boy who fit so naturally in the water, the wild, and in everything else. She loved him: this boy who seemed to grow up out of the ground itself. There was a part of her that had known this from the first time she had seen him. This was what love was: a landslide in your heart.”
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12 people liked it
“Boobs are like boyfriends. You go around wishing for them and trying to figure out what you have to do to get them, and worrying about all the things you're probably doing wrong, and then one day, who knows why, you wake up and find you've got more than you wanted.”
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10 people liked it
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