Elsa is 7 years old and she's different. Very different. Her grandmother is truly different. And she's Elsa's best and only friend. Elsa's grandmother is her safe haven. She's created that safe haven through fairy tales set in the Land of Almost Awake that she tells Elsa late at night. That she tells Elsa in a secret language.
Elsa's parents are divorced and Elsa experiences much that children from "broken homes" experience. Her father is remarried to a woman with children of her own. And while Elsa's mother doesn't appear to be remarried, she's living with a man and they are expecting a new baby. Without Elsa's grandmother around, Elsa struggles to figure out where she should fit in to her new families.
Right before Elsa's grandmother dies, she asks Elsa if she's willing to do a scavenger hunt. Elsa agrees. This leads Elsa on adventure after adventure with the people who live in her apartment building. She learns all about her grandmother and about her neighbors. And she learns the basis of the fairy tales.
I wouldn't recommend it, but I also wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading it either.
I loved Elsa. And while I didn't love her grandmother, I admired her a lot. She was a woman of strength and character even if she was a pretty rotten mother to Elsa's mother. I loved Elsa's descriptions of her parents, her parents' partners and her neighbors. Elsa was mature beyond her years but in a way that I could accept.
What I didn't love about this novel was the fantastical nature of the fairy tales. While this novel was realistic fiction at its finest, I'm not a fan of fantasy. And much of the writing really reminded me of a fantasy novel.
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