High school senior Abby has her future all figured out, including playing college volleyball and rooming with her best friend. Then she and her sister receive a letter from their father who suddenly abandoned them years earlier, telling them that he has Huntington’s disease, a genetic disease that they each have a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting. Shell shocked after receiving her test results,  Abby takes off for the summer to stay with her aunt on Catalina Island.

The premise and plot are fairly straightforward – Abby needs to do some soul searching to figure out what her future holds now that everything in her life is turned upside down. She also has an opportunity to get to know her aunt (her estranged father’s sister) and manages to meet a cute boy, make friends on the island and have some summer fun as well. While the author does delve into Abby’s thoughts and feelings on what the future holds (questions every older teen struggles with) there isn’t a lot of exploration or insight into the subplots – her feelings of abandonment surrounding her father, her eventual meeting with him, the loss she must feel giving up her beloved sport, or her thoughts on the disease’s impact on her family going forward. The author does wrap the story up neatly, but somehow the reader feels as though there were too many threads just left hanging. 

This book is recommended for grades 7 and up and is a fine secondary addition to any YA collection.

Lee Remick, York Middle School