When her credit card gets declined, phone contact from her father stops and summer slips into a frosty fall, Harbour is forced to face reality and accept the help of a homeless girl named Lise to survive on the streets. Lise shows Harbour how to panhandle and navigate the shelter system while trying to unravel Harbour's mysterious past. But if Harbour tells her anything, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Fourteen-year-old Harbour's mother passed away when she was young. Since then, she and her father have been living on their sailboat, sailing from port to port. He drops her off with a phone, a credit card, some cash and her dog, Tuff, in a port city in the States and tells her to catch a bus and make her way to Toronto, where her mother was from. He is going to sail there and join her in about five weeks. While Harbour waits for her dad, she and Tuff camp out in a tent in a ravine, keeping a low profile.
Harbour meets Lise, a homeless girl who spends her days panhandling and knows where to get handouts of food, and spends her nights in a shelter. When her credit card is declined, she is running out of money and her father is not answering his phone, Harbour must accept the help of Lise while she stubbornly waits for her father and never gives up hope that he will come for her even as summer becomes fall and then becomes winter.
This is the second book I've read by this author and I liked it, though I'm older that its target audience. I liked the writing style ... it is written in first person perspective in Harbour's voice. It's not a happy story and I'll admit that at chapter 13 I did jump ahead to the end (chapter 18) as I wanted to see if there would be a happy ending ... and then I jumped back to chapter 13 and carried on. I live in Toronto so it was fun that it was set here because I tried to figure out where the action was happening.
Adding this to my TBR list!
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