Briana's Gift by Lurlene McDaniel

Summary:

Thirteen-year-old Sissy's mother always said that Sissy's sixteen-year-old sister marched to the beat of a different drummer. But it isn't until Briana runs away with an older boy that Sissy begins to understand what her mother meant. When Briana returns home alone and pregnant, Sissy and her mother try to help Briana come to terms with her options.

It was already complicated to think about Briana's choices and then things change suddenly again. When Briana is in a serious accident, Sissy's mother sees things one way. Although Sissy understands her mother's reaction, she feels she must try to convince her mother to make a different decision. Sissy needs to grow up fast and do what she can to maintain Briana's legacy. Will she be able to make her mother understand that there is only one way to accept Briana's gift?

Summary taken from Goodreads.com

First off let me say that this really wasn't my favourite book by Lurlene Mcdaniel at all but I did like it. I liked it because  this book while not being her strongest work in my opinion it is written in the usual way most of her older books were written in being from a first person point of view.

I liked Sissy though I hated her name but I found her mother to be an irritating woman who just because her one teenage daughter (Briana) got pregnant it was as if she had forgotten that she even had another child. At times I was very angry at her mother for shoving Sissy aside because Sissy's world was just as affected by the news of  Briana's prrgnancy as anyone but she was being the mature one while the mother was just acting out much like a small child.

When Briana comes home and starts straightening her life out she gets a job at the local wal-mart and one day suffers from an anuerysm. She ended up becoming brain damaged and all their mother could think of was giving the unborn baby away as soon as she was born. Sissy wasn't taken into account and her mother would not even allow her to put up a Christmas tree that year because she was too caught up in her suffering to see that her daughter was hurting too.

Now Sissy is the advocate for keeping her sister's baby she out right refuses to allow her mother to give her niece away. And boy does she fight. I love how much strength that Sissy had and how she didn't give up.

My favourite part in the book was the end where her mother and her take her niece home from the hospital and the neighbors offer to help them with raising the baby since her mother has arthritis. It was very touching that their small town community offered their time to help raise the appropriately named baby, Noel.

★★★ 1/2