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A review by readingwitherin
Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin
5.0
"Sometimes, you don’t have a choice about where you go. Because it’s somebody else’s story you’re living."
May Contain Spoilers
Counting Thyme follows the middle child of a family who is now having to deal with the youngest having cancer. Thyme and her family have had to move across the country to New York for her youngest sibling to get the new trial treatment that might help them live longer.
Thyme struggles with this, she feels all alone because her parents are busy with her baby brother, and her older sister is trying to fit in at her new school and make friends.
This leaves Thyme with a lot of free time as all she wants to do is move back to the west coast and she plans to do this by collecting and counting up all the time slips she gets from helping out around the house.
With the family struggling to stay afloat due to bills and living on hope alone at times with her brother’s diagnosis and treatment things are tense at home. Add in a cranky neighbor and a helpful nanny/cook/cleaner (I honestly don’t know what to call her, but I do know that I like her) the family is barely being held together and adjusting to their new life.
"Don’t wait for nobody else. You make for yourself, and it will be the best."
Overall I loved this book. The parents’ unwillingness to share everything with the kids in order to protect them from what’s happening was very realistic. Then we also have Thyme wanting her old life back and struggling to fit in and feeling like she is losing her childhood best friend from the west coast. Thyme is also feeling very disconnected from everyone in her family because of how they are all always rushing around now, this leaves her to spend a lot of time with the family’s new helper and this started a really beautiful friendship. I’m not going to say much about the cranky neighbor but just know that their side story ended up being one of my favorites in a middle-grade novel.
I cannot recommend this book enough and I’m looking forward to the authors’ new book Every Missing Piece which comes out later this year!
May Contain Spoilers
Counting Thyme follows the middle child of a family who is now having to deal with the youngest having cancer. Thyme and her family have had to move across the country to New York for her youngest sibling to get the new trial treatment that might help them live longer.
Thyme struggles with this, she feels all alone because her parents are busy with her baby brother, and her older sister is trying to fit in at her new school and make friends.
This leaves Thyme with a lot of free time as all she wants to do is move back to the west coast and she plans to do this by collecting and counting up all the time slips she gets from helping out around the house.
With the family struggling to stay afloat due to bills and living on hope alone at times with her brother’s diagnosis and treatment things are tense at home. Add in a cranky neighbor and a helpful nanny/cook/cleaner (I honestly don’t know what to call her, but I do know that I like her) the family is barely being held together and adjusting to their new life.
"Don’t wait for nobody else. You make for yourself, and it will be the best."
Overall I loved this book. The parents’ unwillingness to share everything with the kids in order to protect them from what’s happening was very realistic. Then we also have Thyme wanting her old life back and struggling to fit in and feeling like she is losing her childhood best friend from the west coast. Thyme is also feeling very disconnected from everyone in her family because of how they are all always rushing around now, this leaves her to spend a lot of time with the family’s new helper and this started a really beautiful friendship. I’m not going to say much about the cranky neighbor but just know that their side story ended up being one of my favorites in a middle-grade novel.
I cannot recommend this book enough and I’m looking forward to the authors’ new book Every Missing Piece which comes out later this year!