The Girl with More Than One Heart by Laura Geringer Bass (review)

After Briana's father dies, the eighth-grader is convinced there's a second heart beating in her abdomen and that it's her father's heart. That parental connection sustains her when her family seems to be falling apart as her grief-stricken mother takes to her bed and leaves Briana largely on her own. Already dealing with the drifting away of her two best friends, Briana also has to take care of her little brother, Aaron, who is increasingly showing signs of needing more support than his school can give. Briana is deeply sympathetic in her isolation, and Geringer Bass simultaneously casts her narration in accessible language yet also runs several metaphors thematically through the book. Unfortunately, the heavy metaphorical load sometimes overbalances the genuine emotional effects of the story, and the frequent flashbacks to Briana's earlier childhood and infancy are elegant but similarly distracting. There's still appeal in the story of a girl whose life has been turned upside down, though, and readers struggling with responsibility for younger siblings might especially relate to this. DS