Someone Else's Life

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 20 FEB 2012

When Rosie's mother dies of Huntington's disease, British teenager Rosie tells her family friend Sarah, the midwife who delivered her, of her plans to get tested for the debilitating genetic illness. But Sarah has some life-changing news for Rosie: Sarah switched Rosie with another baby at birth, a premature girl whose teenage mother had abandoned her, something not even Rosie's mother knew at the time. The other baby, Holly, survived and was raised in America by Rosie's biological father. As Rosie grapples with both the knowledge that she is disease-free and that the mother she loved and lost was not her mother at all, alternating chapters offer Holly's point of view. Holly is engaged, newly pregnant, and completely unaware that she was switched at birth and may be at risk for Huntington's disease. Though dizzying melodrama and convoluted plot points strain believability as Rosie sets out to meet Holly, her father, and her biological mother now a TV star readers should be drawn into the fast-paced, high-stakes narrative. Ages 14 up.