Orbiting Jupiter

My loyalty as a reader and writer is to realism, and this is about as real as it gets. The narrator gets an older foster brother who comes with real complications and a backstory that’s more than a bit scary.

At the same time, the book is so full of familial love that I leaked tears from about chapter three until the end as I watched these characters try to give and receive it.

This young adult novel is a love song from a teenage father to the child he’s never met. He yearns toward her. He wrestles with the consequences of his past decisions. He wants a future that he can never have. I can’t tell you how much I saw myself, a middle-aged mom, in delinquent protagonist Jack. This book is real and visceral and doesn’t pull any punches, but the most important thing it does is remind us that the twin of grief is love.