Lost for Words

After a traumatic summer during which her sister, Emily, was killed, shell-shocked 16-year-old Sophie returns to her London high school feeling increasingly removed from her best friend Abigail (who is hanging out with a more popular crowd and becoming alarmingly thin) and her mother (who has been dealing with Emily's death by isolating herself and collecting lost objects). Reflective Sophie reluctantly takes her therapist's advice and begins to write diary entries and poems, which make up the novel. She bonds with a new friend, Rosa-Leigh, and tries to function normally, but her anger, fear, and sadness resurface throughout. Adult author Kuipers's (Life on the Refrigerator Door) first YA novel delicately details the complexities of the grief process. Through Sophie's perceptive narration, readers get well-developed images of the many characters ("The older one had this twinkle in his expression like he knew stuff," is Sophie's impression of one of Rosa-Leigh's brothers), yet Sophie is a relative cipher. The circumstances of Emily's death—left a mystery for most of the book—have taken a toll on her that goes well beyond the loss of her sister. Ages 12–up. (May)