Everything I Was by Corinne Demas

Life is pretty good for Irene. She likes her private school, enjoys her friends, and her parents take care of everything she wants and needs. But then her father loses his job, and the family faces an uncertain financial situation. While they regroup they move in with Irene's grandfather. Her mother has a hard time adjusting to their new life, and her father carries a lot of guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy around with him. Irene likes being with her grandfather and is even starting to make new friends, but her mind is still on her old life. How is Irene supposed to move on with her life when she can't forget everything that she had - and everything that she was?

Over the last year or so there have been a number of books that have addressed what it was like for kids, tweens, and teens whose parents lost their jobs in the economic downturn of the late 2000s. Irene is a very sympathetic character who tries her best to deal with the way that her life changes. I liked the themes of perspective and how people see different things in the same situation. From the cover I thought that this might be a dramatic story (or maybe even a supernatural one) but it's a very down-to-earth story about finding out that your parents might not have all of the answers that you thought they did.

I received a review copy from NetGalley courtesy of Carolrhoda Books.

See Corinne Demas' website for more information about this and her other books.

Find it at IndieBound.

Read it with:
Dark Song by Gail Giles
All the Things You Are by Courtney Sheinmel
What Happened on Fox Street by Tricia Springstubb
The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas