Waiting

For Ages: 14 and up

customer reviews

After her brother’s death, a teen struggles to rediscover love and find redemption in this “stunningly powerful free-verse story” (VOYA).

Growing up, London and Zach were as close as could be. And then Zach dies, and the family is gutted. London’s father is distant. Her mother won’t speak. The days are filled with what-ifs and whispers: Was it London’s fault?

Alone and adrift, London finds herself torn between her brother’s best friend and the handsome new boy in town as she struggles to find herself—and ultimately redemption—in this authentic and affecting novel from award-winning novelist Carol Lynch Williams.

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Book details:

Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books |
352 pages |
ISBN 9781442443556 |
May 2012 |
Grades 9 and up

$9.99 List Price

Available for immediate download

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Praise

“Thoroughly engaging, heartbreaking, with a taste of hope.”

– Rita Williams-Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer, a Newbery Honor Book on Waiting

SEE ALL PRAISE (7)

“Thoroughly engaging, heartbreaking, with a taste of hope.”

– Rita Williams-Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer, a Newbery Honor Book on Waiting
“Williams, as always, keeps her prose, this time arranged on the page as prose poems, sensitive, intelligent and completely absorbing. She slowly peels back the veils on London’s, her father’s and her mother’s psychology, eventually revealing the strong and the weak and, ultimately, how Zach died. The family she depicts are former missionaries, giving the book strong spiritual undertones that should appeal to religious as well as general audiences. Exceptional. *STARRED review”

– Kirkus Reviews on Waiting
“Exposing the heartbreak of a broken family, the complexities of denial, and the healing power of friendship, Lynch’s (Miles from Ordinary) writing is characteristically gritty but also inspirational as London challenges her mother’s misplaced anger and creates her own route to recovery. *STARRED review”

– Publishers Weekly on Waiting
“With a format and voice that will resonate with teens, Carol Lynch Williams offers a poignant story of strength and healing, all bound by the power of love and friendship. This is YA at its very best!”

– Daniel L. Darigan, Professor of Education, West Chester University.
“Exceptional.”

– Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Inspirational.”

– Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Gut-wrenching.”

– SLJ, starred review

Read an Excerpt

After it happened, no one in school would talk to me.

No one. Not even my best friend, Lauren Hopkins, who has hair to her waist, and who let me dress like her until I figured out how to dress for myself.

She had said, “You know what, London? You homeschool types never look like the rest of the world. Even when you wear the right clothes.”

(I had on blue jeans and a Billy Talent T-shirt and Vans, too. It must have been my face. It must have. A look. I’ve seen it myself in pictures. Wide-eyed, surprised. Happy.

But that’s gone. That look is long gone.)

“So teach me what to... see more