The Hard Kind of Promise

This changing-friendship novel is refreshingly presented without villains or victims. In kindergarten, Sarah and Marjorie promised each other to be best friends "forever." But by seventh grade they have begun to grow apart, much to Sarah's dismay and indeed anguish—even though Sarah is the one moving on. She finds herself wishing that Marjorie was not quite so "weird"—that she would stop suddenly breaking into robotspeak a là kitschy old TV show Lost in Space, stop telling people that she's "a little gassy," and definitely stop wearing Victorian gowns to boy-girl dances. Despite her loyalty to her longtime best friend, Sarah finds herself getting angry "that Marjorie wouldn't just try to be like everyone else, even if it was only in public...that everything changed, whether you wanted it to or not." The novel is about not just loss but discovery, as gradually both Sarah and Marjorie gravitate toward doing what they love (Sarah, singing with her school chorus; Marjorie, making sci-fi films for video production class) and find new sets of friends with whom they have more in common. Still, Willner-Pardo never minimizes the pain of the girls' break. "The ache in Sarah's heart was so piercing that it might have been caused by a dagger. She [was] surprised by the fierceness of her longing, by the way missing someone could hurt so much." A perceptive, poignant novel of middle-school identity and friendship. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO