Fourteen-year-old Bonnie and her best friend Jen have started a new advice blog dedicated to surviving the horrors of middle school. When not online, Bonnie escapes from her huge, blended family, complete with “half sibs, step-sibs, half-step-step sibs, half sibs of your half sibs who are not your sibs at all but somehow wind up barfing on your bed anyway,” by recording her private thoughts in an ‘offline’ journal. But trouble looms for Bonnie in the form of Carter, her new Slimerator of a stepbrother. And Jen has troubles too - her mother Tina, a nurse battling an alcohol addiction, often leaves Jen to care for her baby sister Julia on her own.
When Carter tries to mend fences by inviting Bonnie and Jen to a Friday-night dance at 'Prep H', his exclusive boys' school, Bonnie meets the Beautiful Boy: Paolo from Turin, who boards at the school. But everything isn't sunshine and unicorns from then on. The night after the dance, Jen's mom doesn't come home - she's back on the sauce. And Bonnie starts to suspect Carter - her own exactly-the-same-age-as-her step-brother, eeeeeuuuuwwwww---has a secret crush on her!
Can Bonnie and Jen survive their own problems, while still giving A1 advice to their on-line confidantes? At turns poignant, and pointedly funny, How to Survive Absolutely Anything reveals how life can be about much, much more than mere survival.
Fitzhenry & Whiteside Publishers
978-1554551880
Available at Bookstores Everywhere!
