Waiting on Wednesday (#35) - Learning Not To Drown by Anna Shinoda

Waiting on Wednesday is Hosted by Jill @ Breaking The Spine

There is a pecking order to every family. Seventeen-year old Clare is the overprotected baby; Peter is the typical, rebellious middle child; and Luke is the-can't-do wrong favorite. To their mother, they are a normal, happy family. And then there are the roles we give ourselves. Clare: the ambitious striver; Peter: the angry ticking time bomb; and Luke: a drug addicted, convicted felon who has been in and out of jail for as long as Clare can remember. To Clare, they are a family on the verge of disaster. Clare has long refused to believe her brother is truly bad...he dotes her, doesn't he? But as Clare starts piecing together the truth about her brother's stints in jail, it starts changing the way she thinks about him. It has also changes the way the community views the family. The only thing it hasn't changed is the way their mother feels about Luke. Each time she welcomes him home with open arms and brushes off his crimes as "wrong place and wrong time," Clare can feel a little piece of her happy home life being taken away. And when her mother does the unthinkable--takes Clare's hard-earned college savings to post bail for Luke's latest transgression--Clare has to decide if sticking up for herself and her future means selfishly turning her back on family...or if it's the only way to keep herself from drowning along with them.

Debut novelist Anna Shinoda's raw, gritty, powerful novel cuts right to the bone and brings to life the skeletons the lurk in the closet.

Why I'm Waiting For It: I saw this on a blogger's blog a while back and I knew it had to be my WoW! I'm in love with the cover and the first line hooked me! I hope this book turns out to be one of those rare gems in YA in 2014 and I honestly want to get an ARC of this!

Learning Not To Drown by Anna Shinoda will be released on April 1, 2014

Find Learning Not To Drown On:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Goodreads