Love, Meg

Meg Shanley has forever longed for a "normal" family. Big sister Lucie is the closest thing she's got - and Meg's life with Lucie is anything but normal. Flakey and irresponsible, Lucie flits around from job to job and town to town, dragging a hapless Meg with her. The only thing Meg has ever really been able to count on is her correspondence with the affable Jennifer Anniston. Because Jenn, unlike Lucie, is always there with the just-right advice, and has never let Meg down. Love, MEG is a stellar debut novel. C Leigh Purtill hits just the right notes, striking the perfect combination of love- and coming-of-age story. Every family has secrets, and every kid dreams of living a normal life. And as readers follow Meg Shanley through her journey, they will not only identify with her struggles, they will come love her warmth and authenticity.

A wonderful heartfelt story. I'm 40 years old and yet I was pulled right in to this world through the straighforward yet poetic text. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward Leigh Purtill's next work which I hope is published soon.

This book was totally heartfelt with wonderful storytelling that it was hard to break away. The characters were so great and had real depth to all of them even the most seemingly minor little characters. There were some moments when you want to just yell at some characters and other moments when you wish you could just give Meg a big hug and comfort her. She is truly a very real teenager filled with the typical social anxieties that teens go through but always optimistic that everything will turn out with the way they should. In the end, it wasn't about everything having a happy ending with this book, it's all about going through Meg's journey through some of the hardest secrets and truths and experiences that any person, teen or adult could ever go through... with a little help from Jen! Wonderful wonderful!!

In "Love, Meg" Leigh Purtill has created living, breathing characters that, by the end of the novel, seem so real that I could hardly wait to find out what happened, and I can easily imagine their lives continuing past the concluding pages. There is also a great sense of place - a different, street-level view of both Los Angeles and New York City that is not often described. A great first effort - I look forward to many more books by this author.

Teenager Meg Shanley and her thrity-year-old sister, Lucie, are moving from town to town, looking for a better life. Their parents are gone and Lucie has taken over the role as mother to Meg, although she has not done a very good job of it. Lucie tends to think more along the lines of what's best for herself instead of what's best for Meg. Meg must travel with Lucie because she has no other family to go to. When Lucie abandons her motherly role, Meg finds a new "mother," Jennifer Aniston. Meg writes all of her worries and woes in a letter - and Jennifer Aniston actually replies! The replies are motherly, filled with caring and solutions to her problems. Jen is more of a mother to Meg than Lucie is of a sister. One day, a strange man arrives at Meg and Lucie's Los Angeles house bringing a horrifying truth: Lucie is not exactly who she has been pretending to be. The man, Lonnie, explains that Meg has a grandmother and even a father back in New York. No one knows anything about Meg's father, though, except that he doesn't even know that Meg exists. With Lucie's words of "If you go, don't come back" imprinted on her mind, Meg hops on a plane to New York to find a family she never knew existed - and what she finds is much more than she expected... If I could give LOVE, MEG a higher rating I would! This book totally captivated me and made me look forward to continuing my reading. LOVE, MEG is a book I will lend and recommend to other readers proudly. I cannot explain how amazing I thought this book was. Reviewed by: Jeremey