Review of The Secret Sisters Club

THE SECRET SISTERS CLUB: A Ginnie West Adventure (BOOK 1)

Author bio:

Monique Bucheger was born in Landstuhl, Germany to active duty Air Force parents. After watching her creative writing teacher's astronaut son lift off in the Space Shuttle Endeavor, she recalled a promise to her teacher to write the books only she could write. In January of 2011, her first book made it through the first 3 tiers of Amazon's National BreakThrough Novel Award Contest to the top 5%. In November of 2012 Mrs. Bucheger was offered a 3 book contract for her Ginnie West series. Book one: THE SECRET SISTERS CLUB: A Ginnie West Adventure was published March 8, 2012. Her second book: TROUBLE BLOWS WEST: A Ginnie West Adventure was published April 14, 2012. 

Mrs. Bucheger has championed the cause of children as a foster parent to over 120 children and her books embrace and empower people on all sides of the child abuse issue.

Book Blurb: 
Twelve-year-old BFF’s Ginnie and Tillie, want to be sisters. Ginnie's widowed dad plus Tillie's divorced mom could equal a lifetime of round-the-clock girl talk and slumber parties. Too bad Dad vowed to never marry again. Ginnie and Tillie form a secret club and come up with the perfect mission to change his mind: ‘Operation Secret Sisters’.

Before long, Tillie seems happier about gaining a dad than a sister. Ginnie suspects that Tillie has turned ‘Operation Secret Sisters’ into a scam called ‘Operation Steal My Dad.’  Things get more complicated when Ginnie stumbles across her real mom’s hidden journals. Ginnie can finally get to know the mother she doesn’t remember and Dad doesn’t talk about.

When Dad discovers she has the journals, he takes them away. Ginnie needs to figure out what the big mystery is before her relationship with her father and her best friend are ruined forever.


Review
At first when I started reading this book I was very aware of it being a book for teens and it wasn't really my style, though it is very well written. However, as I read, the characters came to life and took on their own personalities. Monique truly captured the irrationally unstable emotions of a 12 year old so well. Specifically one who is missing her mother and therefore not willing to see reason or be understanding to other's needs
I found myself feeling for the Ginnie and Tillie, but also found myself to be in complete understanding with Ginnie's dad, even if she didn't understand his reasons for doing what he did. The characters were real, and their feelings, actions, and responses to situations were very true to life, making it easy to find myself inside their lives, rather than just reading about it.
I started reading it just for a quick read, but was soon captivated and lost track of time in my eagerness to find out how Ginnie was going to respond and wanting so much for her to understand what was happening. I would definitely recommend this book to both adults and teenagers alike.


To learn more about Monique and her other books please see the following links:

Monique's blog: http://moniquebucheger.blogspot.com/, 

FB: http://www.facebook.com/monique.bucheger 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoniqueBucheger