Love Like Sky // Leslie C. Youngblood

 G-baby has just entered a blended family and now in addition to her little sister Peaches she has a big sister, well, step-sister. G-baby is doing everything in her power to get Tangie to like her but it turns out family is complicated. Sisters get sick, Mamas and Daddies argue, friendship is tricky to figure out, and everyone has a backstory that you won't know unless they tell you. It's a lot to navigate but one thing you can always depend on: love never ends. You might say it's like the sky. 

This book is an intense dive into what community means. Many characters come and go, but they never give up on each other; they're all in it together to take care of each other. Seeing the communal care through G-baby's eyes while Peaches was in the hospital reminded me of my own experiences when I was eleven and my dad was in the hospital for an extended amount of time. My family's community rallied around us, too. I remember holding so much anger and uncertainty in my body throughout that time, even as I tried to be a good big sister like G-baby was trying to be. Like her, I think I got a lot of my choices wrong, but you're just a kid and you're trying to figure it out. I am the oldest sister like Tangie; as I read I kept wondering what the book would be like written from her eyes.

Having written several blurbs now, I'm finding that I often write about the internal journey characters take in books. The external details aren't as important to me as the journey characters take to learn a life-lesson or arrive at a self-discovery. If a story is well-written, the external and the internal blend seamlessly and each informs the other. As a writer I know this takes so much background revising and editing to accomplish, but I'm loving the amount of books I'm reading lately where this balance is reached. Love Like Sky achieves that balance. I'm very excited to know that there's a sequel out so I can read more of G-baby and her family!