Y by Marjorie Celona

Published by: Hamish Hamilton Canada
Pages: 288
Goodreads:  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13489087-y

This is going to be a hard review for me, I was really excited to win this book, and I had high expectations for it, but for some reason, I could not connect with any of the characters, and I did not enjoy it.  It was not the writing by any means, it was beautiful, I think it was mostly the main character, maybe because I have not been through the same things that she had, and I could not understand where she was coming from.

The story starts off with Shannon being left abandoned at the YMCA doors by her mother Yula. Throughout the book we see her journey through childhood and then in to her teenage years, and how she is bounced around from house to home until she lands at one that finally becomes her home.

In between some of Shannon's chapters we also get to see some of the events leading up to Yula's decision to leave Shannon at the YMCA, I did enjoy that part of the story more than Shannon's story for some reason. Yula definitely did not have it easy, and was without a mother figure in her life at that point herself to help her through the tough decisions.

Shannon does eventually go in search of her biological parents, and it does take her on quite a journey with some new characters. The part of this book that made it a 3 star instead of 2 is the ending, I am so use to authors making it that "happily ever after" endings in fictional novels, that I was very happy to see the "realistic" ending, not a good or bad, just something that you can see happening in real life, it is just the way some things work out sometimes.

I know that I am one of the few that did not give this book a 4 or 5 star rating, but it just was not worth that to me, I did finish it, but I have taken a few days to think about it, and it is just not one of those books that I fell in love with, or could not put down.