I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted by Jennifer Finney Boylan

I had actually picked this book up under the impression that it was written about a child who had grown up in a haunted house.

This is in fact about a haunted child growing up in a haunted house. Young Jimmy really wants to be young Jenny, with the dresses, underthings, and desires of a young lady. Written very well and you fall in love with the individual, whether at a young age as a young boy, troubled because he wants to be a she, or as an older woman after having gone through the change to become what she always desired to be.

Jennifer has an awesome sense of humor, reflected in her writing. She is a college professor and I personally would love to be in on one of her classes. This is a very impressive woman, who has gone through a very rough time gently.

http://jenniferfinneyboylan.com/

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

This book was issued to me for review from Bestsellersworld.

Elizabeth McCracken loses a child and also has a child in this book. We are with her in France as she revels in her pregnancy, her first, at an older age. We are with her as she learns that the baby is not alive and with her as she goes through the birth of her stillborn baby boy, Pudding.
This had to have been a very tough, but maybe therapeutic thing for this author to do. This book will absolutely have you bawling and laughing, mostly bawling. Elizabeth McCracken is such a brave woman to have the capacity to share with us all of the emotions that she experienced during this rough & emotional time.
There is a death of a child and a birth of a child in this book. Both are amazingingly written about.

http://elizabethmccracken.com/

Damaged by Kia Dupree

This book as mailed to me for review from Bestsellersworld.

Camille Logan is a young girl who has been abandoned by her mother and is being raised by her grandmother in ghetto Washington, DC. Her grandmother is not really able to care for her and she is entered into the foster care system and is placed in a home with the Brinkley's, outwardly a church-going, steady family with 3 boys.

What is happening inside the home is a far cry from the image that is being seen from the outside. The father is abusing Camille and her other female foster sister, Danica. This goes on for years and Camille meets a young man, Chu, who focuses all of his attention and money on her and essentially takes her in at the ripe age of about 15.

Life happens and Camille eventually ends up walking the streets as "Nectar", living an existence that most of us would not even know the first thing about. From there we learn about what it takes to live in that particular lifestyle.

This book was written so true to the dialect & lifestyle that probably pervades the seedier side of almost any city. Kia DuPree has done a great job of making you feel that you are a part of this.

I really felt that this book could have had an ending. The author left you with nothing. Is Camille's life getting better? Will she stay off the streets? Will she and Rob get together? There were absolutely no answers.

http://kiadupree.com/