It is a touching story that made me laugh and that made me cry. It is also a beautiful story about different kinds of families, about deep connections that can be formed between people from different walks of life and above all, it is about surviving adversity. On the surface, this is an innocuous book, full of good intentions: it is a book featuring different stories about diverse PoC characters (including its protagonist). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when I fell out of love with Counting by 7s but it happened slowly yet inexorably in the hours after I finished reading it. Then whilst at BEA, I saw the Middle Grade buzz panel which featured this book and it sounded wonderful. Why did I read this book: I’ve heard nothing but good things about Holly Goldberg Sloan’s debut I’ll Be There. How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publishers – from BEA Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life.

Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. In the tradition of Out of My Mind, Wonder, and Mockingbird, this is an intensely moving middle grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering the true meaning of family.

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan