The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James by Ashley Herring Blake

The book starts as Sunny receives a heart transplant.  As she heals she is delighted to be able to do the kind of things that she has been to sick to do for a long time.  She is determined to start a new life plan, but getting a new heart doesn't solve all of Sunny's problems.  She is also healing from a painful break-up with her previous BFF, and she has been thinking a lot about her birth mother who abandoned her when she was a young child.  Then Quinn comes into her life and things get even more complicated.

I read this book because it has received a bunch of starred reviews, and deals with a same gender romance of a 12 year old. I was tasked with trying to decide whether my tiny library should purchase a copy and if we do, what section to put it in.  I can see why it has received good reviews.  The characters are written with such heart that you suffer along with Sunny as she tries over and over again to deny that she is attracted to a girl, and also as she wrestles with a life time of feelings of abandonment as she comes to meet her birth mother again.  Sunny sometimes just gets overwhelmed, and can't process everything, which is think is a really authentic response to dealing with such difficult things at such a young age. By the end of the book the reader is hoping she will finally kiss Quinn and that it will be as magical as she always hoped her first kiss would be. The one thing I thought was unrealistic, is that both Sunny's birth mom and foster mom are totally unfazed by her same gender attraction.  I think real parents would be upset by the revelation, even if they have open minds about same gender attraction, because they would understand what a rough time a GLBT youth has ahead of them as they face prejudice going into high school. Usually a book about a 12-year-old would be in Intermediate Fiction, but after reading this book, I think we will put it in Young Adult.  I just don't think my community is ready to deal with a same gender romance between two kids that are so young. (2019, 375 p.)