What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Middle grade book about girl whose mother goes to jail. [s]
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This girl's mother got caught embezzling funds and has to go to jail. The company she worked at, which she stole money from, was actually a soap opera production place, named something falls. The book is about the girl's process of dealing with her mother going to prison. I remember she didn't know what to wear to the trial, until she remembered her mother said to always have something black to wear to funerals but she doesn't own anything black so she wears charcoal.
Her stepfather she calls Faux Pa (isn't that cute?) who is really close to her, closer than he is to his own kids, and I think later in the book he decides to get divorced from the mother. He has 2 or 3 kids, the main character's stepsiblings, who she doesn't know that well, but gets to know better further into the book.
One of the stepsiblings is a girl who always wears black and she is in her mid- to late - teens, unlike the main character who is tweens or early teens. The stepsister is either named Reese or has a best friend called Reese. I just remember liking the name. We'll just call the stepsister Reese here, even though I'm not positive it's her name. Reese likes reading and she has a sleepover with her friend, who might be the one called Reese, where they just read in each others company. MC thinks this is weird.
Later in the book, MC realizes she needs a bra, but who will take her to buy one if her mother is in jail?? Reese had said, if you need anything I can help, so she asks Reese to take her to buy a bra. Reese does so, and it is a bonding memory for them. MC didn't realize how expensive it would be, so Reese even pays for it. MC is worried her stepfather will ask what they bought and see the bra, so Reese buys a random shirt to put on top of the bra in the bag, saying she will return it later. The shirt is blue, and MC thinks reese should keep it because the color would look nice on her, but Reese only wears black.
I remember for a long time in the book MC thought her mother hadn't embezzled the funds and was accused wrongly, but she was shocked and sad to learn her mother really had done it and she has to come to terms with this. Her mother really liked a song about clouds in coffee, and the girl and her mother were always discussing what this might mean. They thought it meant the cloud of cream/milk right when you add it before you mix it. The mother went to an all-women prison for people with non-violent crimes. I think she wrote to her daughter that the clouds in coffee were a reflection from the window in an airplane into the coffee cup.
I read it probably from 2008 to 2012.