Someone Else's Life

by Katie Dale

Overview

When 17-year-old Rosie's mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington's Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty percent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when Rosie tells her mother's best friend, "Aunt Sarah," that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie wasn't her real mother after all. Rosie was swapped at birth with a sickly baby who was destined to die.
Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, joining her ex-boyfriend on his gap year travels, to find her birth mother in California. But all does not go as planned. As Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonizing decision of her own, one which will be the most heart breaking and far-reaching of all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375899720
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	02/14/2012
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
Lexile:	HL660L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

KATIE DALE studied English literature at Sheffield University, spending a year at the Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a year at drama school, a national Shakespeare tour, and eight months backpacking through Southeast Asia.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 Up—When Rosie Kenning's mother, Trudie, dies of Huntington's disease, the 17-year-old's world is turned upside down. She believes she has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the incurable illness. Then she learns from her mom's best friend that she was switched at birth with a dying baby. Not knowing what else to do, she travels from England to the United States with her boyfriend to try to find her biological mother. What starts out as a simple trip snowballs into a journey of discovery. Once Rosie learns that Trudie's biological daughter, Holly, is alive, she faces an agonizing decision. Should she tell the truth about their births in case Holly might have inherited the disease? Or are some secrets better off kept? Dale uses different font styles to indicate the voices of the two teens, slowly revealing that the second speaker is Holly. Emotions run high throughout the book and cause her to make a series of bad decisions, which can make her unlikable at times, but eventually she redeems herself. Dale constructs an intriguing story about how families come in many forms and that love can be found in unexpected places. This book is sure to resonate with teens, especially those who live in nontraditional homes.—Kimberly Castle-Alberts, Stark County District Library, Canton, OH

School Library Journal

When Rosie's mother dies of Huntington's disease, British teenager Rosie tells her family friend Sarah, the midwife who delivered her, of her plans to get tested for the debilitating genetic illness. But Sarah has some life-changing news for Rosie: Sarah switched Rosie with another baby at birth, a premature girl whose teenage mother had abandoned her, something not even Rosie's mother knew at the time. The other baby, Holly, survived and was raised in America by Rosie's biological father. As Rosie grapples with both the knowledge that she is disease-free and that the mother she loved and lost was not her mother at all, alternating chapters offer Holly's point of view. Holly is engaged, newly pregnant, and completely unaware that she was switched at birth and may be at risk for Huntington's disease. Though dizzying melodrama and convoluted plot points strain believability as Rosie sets out to meet Holly, her father, and her biological mother—now a TV star—readers should be drawn into the fast-paced, high-stakes narrative. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Associates. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

As 17-year-old Rosie Kenning watched helplessly as Huntington's disease consumed her mother, as the mood swings and the chorea ravaged body and soul, one question haunted her: "Will this happen to me?" The answer will change her life in ways she couldn't possibly imagine. In the first of many unexpected plot twists, Rosie learns that there is no way she could possibly have Huntington's, because Trudie Kenning wasn't really her mother. Rosie was switched at birth with an abandoned baby that was sure to die. Desperate to find the mother and father she never knew, Rosie and her boyfriend, Andy, travel across the Atlantic in search of answers. The secrets and lies that they uncover will not only push their relationship to the brink but will also threaten to destroy the lives of those they have encountered along the way. An actress as well as a writer, debut novelist Dale clearly has a flair for the dramatic. Rosie's first-person account is punctuated by narration in another, mysterious voice; leaving this narrator unidentified contributes both to the building suspense and character development. All in all, it is a far cry from the typical disease novel. It reads the way a haunted house might, with the unexpected lurking behind every door. Though in the end readers' patience might be tried by having the rug pulled out from underneath them one too many times, they'll be hard pressed to let Rosie out of their sight until the last page is turned. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews