All the reviews I found online for this book seemed to have too many spoilers! Otherwise I was going to copy and past a review in here. I read this when I was in 7th or 8th grade and really liked it. Many of the reviews stated that the story was "implausible," but maybe reading as a kid made me believe it more than the adults writing the reviews. Besides, Nancy Springer mostly writes SF&F, so everything I've read by her has a touch of fantastic - if not outright magic. Not to say this book has anything fantasy about it - it's just not surprising to me that her stories seem a bit unbelievable.

This is a story about a girl named Tess who is very poor and lives with her wheelchair-bound stepfather. Tess can't remember anything from her early childhood. Her poverty, as well as her size (she is one of the biggest & strongest girls in her grade) make her a target for teasing and even more serious harrasement. But then she hears a song on the radio that touches her with its passion and pain. And then she meets a scarred, tough looking teenager named Kamo who starts asking her questions that begin to bring up both Tess' and Kamo's pasts.

Overall, I remember loving it, and checking it out from the library several times. I don't know if reading it again, as an adult, I would find Tess' situation "implausible," but then again so many adult romance and thriller novels seem pretty implausible to me now anyway.

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