It's Raining Cupcakes (review)

"It's Raining Cupcakes" is the name of Isabel's mother's new business, or it will be if twelve-year-old Isabel can, with her dad and grandmother's help, keep her hypersensitive and easily discouraged mother together long enough to open the shop. Though she also loves to bake, adventurous Isabel is otherwise her mother's opposite, and she particularly longs to travel (her mother's fear of flying has kept the family limited to local vacation options); when her friend Sophie discovers a baking contest for kids with finals held in New York City, Isabel sees this as her big chance—if her mother doesn't turn this into yet another thing that's all about her. Isabel has a perky, believable preteen voice, and Schroeder writes with understanding of a family that's shaped itself indulgently around one member's frailties at the expense of everything else. That problem is never really faced head-on, though, with Isabel's dad getting off scot-free for his poor choices and the ease of Isabel's mother's eventual willed improvement making her seem all the more selfish for never trying before; the story also begins to accumulate contrivances toward the end without ever really providing a climax. The easygoing accessibility will draw readers, however, and they'll find both the fictional cupcakes and the fidelity to Isabel's feelings sweet reward.