It was just something about the way the front cover and the back cover – with the other half of the girl’s face seen – mixed together with the description that seemed to have some sort of pull. These are the things that spark many teenagers’ interests, and I have to say, I’m no different. “But this guy is trouble, in a way that Charlie – and he – could have never anticipated.” It says in the back of the book. The fact that the girl in the front cover isn’t smiling she has on a very serious face and looks almost angry also seemed to spark some interest in me. The sunset in the background over a calm lake and woods with half the face of a girl made the book seem very mysterious and anything mysterious appeals to me. I borrowed the book from my school library because the front cover appealed to me.

I am sorry to say that Grist was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. It's all rich grist for a keen-eyed young writer's mill, as Charlie learns that the best material comes not from exciting travels and circumstances, but from journeys to new places inside herself. And then there's the mystery of the Chocolate Moose Man, an almost mythical figure who turned up at her mother's funeral thirteen years before. As revelation upon revelation builds, she discovers the unthinkable: Kerry is her half-brother and the man she's always taken to be her father isn't after all. Then she falls for Kerry, a handsome local hunk, and wants to tell him how she feels.

For one thing, she agrees to compete in the gruelling Four Islands Race. Instead, she steps into a series of unexpected adventures that will alter her view of what seemed a dull and tedious existence. She decides to spend the summer with her grandmother on remote Lake Ringrose in northern Ontario, where she thinks she can laze on a hammock all summer and get in touch with her mother's roots. P> Sixteen-year-old Charlie, an ambitious and dedicated writer who thinks her small-town life doesn't offer any material for her work, is sure of three things: That her blow-up at her tactless creative writing teacher must have contributed to his heart attack, That she doesn't want to spend her summer with her father's girlfriend and her triplets, And that she has to get away. Not her father, the boy she likes, or even the mysterious man from her mother's funeral.

No one is who they seem to be in Charlie's world. Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2007

Grist by heather waldorf