Author: Alice Hoffman

Eleven-year old Amanda has been diagnosed with AIDS which she contracted through a blood transfusion. The story tells a bit about her journey to death but it focuses more on her family and friends and how the diagnosis affects them. I would have liked to have more background on the other characters as they were all very interesting – the astronomer father, the photographer mother, young brother, estranged grandparents, her doctor and a local medium.

I had some difficulty with this book but a bit of research has helped make more sense of it. I read it on my Kindle (the book went to Kindle in 2014) and I didn’t understand why the timeline from diagnosis to death was so short. Surely by 2014 there was more knowledge about paediatric AIDS. But the original book (hard cover) was published in 1998 so the research and treatments weren’t so well known and the difficulties and discrimination Amanda faced were understandable.

Goodreads Rating: * * *