Title: Ten Thousand Truths
Author: Susan White
Publisher: Acornpress
Genre: Middle grade fiction
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Review:
going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. Ten Thousand Truths won an award at our Digitally Lit Youth Choice Awards for being a the most popular youth pick. A true Digitally Lit classic! So it was high time I read it.
I took this novel at face value, I didn’t expect a whole lot, and it decently met my expectations. This story isn’t anything particularly innovative or groundbreaking, not to be mean, but yeah, it’s a story I’ve seen before. I think the broadway musical turned movie Annie has a very similar story. Girl in the foster system who doesn’t have a family finds a family by the end of it! I like the found family trope as much as anyone, but its a bit on a nose to have it be a foster family haha.
I enjoyed reading the book for the most part, it’s a solid novel for what it is. The main character Rachel lost her family, and finds a family in her foster family, hates it at first, and then really likes it by the end of everything. It’s a heartwarming story, and I believe the author herself was a foster child, so I like that it draws from personal experience in that regard. I am always interesting in learning more about how other children grow up, and of course I was rooting for Rachel and didn’t want her to stay in that abusive foster home. It’s a good middle grade novel that I would recommend to fans of the found family trope, or fans of the play/movie Annie!
Official synopsis from Acornpress:
A moving story of losing family but finding a new one. Thirteen-year-old Rachel is bad news, or so her foster care worker tells her. She’s been shuttled from one rotten foster family to another ever since her mother and brother died in a car accident five years ago, and she’s running out of options. So when she gets caught shoplifting and is kicked out of her latest home, the only place left to send her is the last resort for kids like her: a farm in the middle of nowhere run by a disfigured recluse named Amelia Walton, whom Rachel nicknames “Warty” because of the strange lumps covering her face and neck. Rachel settles into life at the farm, losing herself in her daily chores and Amelia’s endless trivia, and trying to forget her past and the secret she’s holding inside. But when a letter arrives for her out of the blue, Rachel soon realizes that you can’t hide from your past-or your future.
