Reviews of Girls In Trouble by Caroline Leavitt

Media Reviews

The Washington Post - Carrie Brown The success of Girls in Trouble is that it is both a page-turner and also a canny portrait of the trouble perfectly ordinary people can get into while trying to satisfy their perfectly ordinary needs for love and security and happiness. The pleasure of this novel, our enjoyment of it, comes from Leavitt's wisdom about the deep chasm of misfortune, her exploration of misfortune's steep slope and her recognition that climbing out of misfortune's pit, step by arduous step, requires a heroism that literature, with its capacity for rendering the elevated quality of ordinary experience, can portray so beautifully.

BookSense 76 Selection The ups and downs, joys and sorrows, and pitfalls of open adoption. The reader will empathize with each point of view. The characters are well developed and likable, and the story is compelling.

Carole Goldberg - The Hartford Courant A piercing spin on the theme of Romeo and Juliet. Leavitt makes this story refreshingly new. There are no villains here, just believable people trying to make the best of a difficult situation and - children and adults alike - growing up and growing wiser.

Glamour Magazine Given the hot topic of this novel--open adoptions gone wrong, you'd expect a finger-pointing, too PC-tone. But Leavitt's surprising take will get your book group really talking.

San Francisco Chronicle The strengths of Girls In Trouble lie in the questions it raises about complicated love, both family and romantic.

Smoky Mountain News - Jeff Minick Leavitt displays her considerable talents for insight into the human heart. Clear, crystalline style...we are in the presence of a writer who values words.

The Celebrity Cafe Emotionally charged story about first love, resentment, self discovery, family and forgiveness. Deeply touching, honest and memorable.

Booklist - Gillian Engberg In this wrenching exploration of parent-child relationships, Leavitt captures the tensions and rhythms of family attachments--the unspoken language, the simmering resentments and sweet hopes, the blinding, protective love that can both damage and heal.

Kirkus Reviews A sadly familiar tale by Leavitt, though ably written in a straightforward style likely to appeal to teenagers and their parents as well.

Library Journal - Nanci Milone Hill This is a wonderful story of family relationships, the choices we make, and whom we can count on. Recommended for all public libraries.

Publishers Weekly Leavitt's uneven but earnest eighth novel examines the emotional price a bright Massachusetts teen pays when she chooses open adoption for a baby she gives birth to at 16.

 Abby Frucht — author of Polly's Ghost and Are You Mine? Sara Rothman could be anybody's daughter...but her frank, warm, wise, gripping story, Girls in Trouble, could only be Caroline Leavitt's.

 Elizabeth Strout — author of Amy and Isabelle Heartfelt, filled with humanity, this story about the different forms of family bonds is a joy to read.

 Gail Tsukiyama — author of Dreaming Water The beauty of Caroline Leavitt's writing is in her flawless depiction of our human flaws. In Girls in Trouble, we ache for Sara, whose youthful decision will color the rest of her life--a poignant story of family and love, of what we lose, and sometimes, what we find again.

 Kate Grenville — Orange Prize winning author of The Idea of Perfection Kept me pinned to the page, swept along in an intense emotional journey with characters so real they seemed like friends. A beautifully written, moving and very wise book.

 Laura Kasischke — author of The Life Before Her Eyes Astonishing...there is a radiant joy that shines through it...a novel as rich and complex as it is meticulous.

 Margot Livesey — author of Eva Moves the Furniture What makes Caroline Leavitt's work so remarkable is her ability to conjure a whole range of disparate and difficult characters onto the page and to make us care deeply about each and all of them. Girls in Trouble is both utterly engrossing and richly satisfying.

 Sandra Benitez — author of A Place Where the Sea Remembers and The Weight of All Things A touching, heartfelt story showing that love can be a tangled journey

 Suzanne Beecher — Chapter-a-Day Bookclubs and Working Mother book columnist Leavitt's heroine was pregnant at sixteen, and so was I....This book made me not only want to talk about what happened to me, but to claim it.

Reader Reviews

R. Jewel
I love a novel that teaches me something and Caroline Leavitt has let us inside a world most of us would never know about--open adoption. And I loved that Sara, the heroine who got pregnant as a teenager, was an honor's student from an upper middle...   Read More S.L. B.
I see that I am the first to review this book so let me be careful in my words....this was not the greatest book ever written but it was good,very very good! Was it realistic? Probaly more than you think!
the characters were written very real not ...   Read More

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