Josie?s never met her dad, and that?s fine with her. To Josie, Paul Tucci is just a guy who got her mom pregnant and then moved away. It all happened sixteen years ago, when Josie?s mom was still a teenager herself. But now Paul Tucci is back in town, and Josie has to deal with not one but two men in her life?her father and her first boyfriend, who Josie fears will hurt her just like Paul hurt her mother.
For Keeps
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up—Josie's junior year is more eventful than she had expected. While navigating her first serious romance, she must come to terms with the fact that her mother has a boyfriend for the first time in 16 years. Josie has never known her father, who moved out of state with his family before she was born. When her paternal grandparents move back into town, she has to face the possibility of meeting him. This fast-paced story takes many twists and turns as the teen discovers the truth behind her parents' separation and her father's absence. Josie is humorous and sincere as she narrates both her mother's struggle and her own to let go of the past and embrace new relationships. The book discusses sex and abortion, and includes adult language and underage drinking. Many readers will be able to relate to this protagonist, whose strength and maturity set a positive example. Friend skillfully portrays the challenges of adolescence while telling an engaging story with unique and genuine characters.—Erin Carrillo, formerly at Alachua County Library District, Gainesville, FL
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
From Booklist
Growing up in Elmhurst, Massachusetts, high-school junior Josie is close with her single-parent mom, Katie, 33, who got pregnant as a teenager. Mother and daughter have a lot of fun together, sometimes switching roles, but then Paul, the father Josie has never met, comes back to town. Will Josie run into him? Why did he leave after he found out Katie was pregnant and never contact them again? Did he want Katie to have an abortion? With the mother-daughter relationship at the core of this lively novel, the contemporary story also weaves in many subplots about Josie’s romance with her boyfriend and her friendship with her best pal, Liv, who has a happy family with two gay dads. Is Liv pregnant? Abortion is a recurring theme, and so is family. But this isn't just an issue-driven story. There is a real plot, filled with fast, immediate dialogue and secrets about Josie’s mother, father, and grandparents that continue to the novel's end. Grades 8-11. --Hazel Rochman
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too,
By TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: For Keeps (Hardcover)
Gold Star Award Winner!
I was really excited to discover Natasha Friend was releasing a new book. Many of my students have enjoyed her other books: LUSH, BOUNCE, and PERFECT. Now that I've read FOR KEEPS, I know they will love this one, too. What happens when you think that sometimes you are more mature and in control than your mother? That's how Josie Gardner sometimes feels. She and her mother have made it through a lot together. Josie knows she was the product of a high school romance. She knows her dad's name was Paul Tucci and that he left town with his family not even knowing he was going to be a father. It never really made a difference until one day in the grocery store. Josie's mother suddenly ducks for cover in the pet-food aisle. What is going on? Kate Gardner appears to be a nervous wreck as she whispers to her daughter that Paul Tucci's parents are in the store. When Josie takes a peek at the couple headed for the checkout, she suddenly realizes they are her grandparents. Now it's a matter of calming down her frantic mother and finding out what they are doing here. The mystery is solved by Josie's best friend, Liv. With a little amateur sleuthing, Liv finds out that the Tucci's have moved back to town. When Josie tells her mother, she's surprised by Kate's sudden lack of interest. Josie doesn't think there will be a problem and probably not even any contact between them. It all changes when her boss turns his mediocre ice cream parlor into a thriving little pastry/coffee shop. Josie's grandfather, Big Nick Tucci, becomes a regular customer. Again, thanks to her talkative best friend, Josie learns that Paul is the youngest of the Tucci's three boys, and he remains unmarried, working with at-risk youth somewhere in the Carolinas. Filled with mixed emotions about the possible return of the side of her family she's never known, Josie faces further emotional upheaval when the popular and attractive Matt Rigby makes it known that he is interested in dating her. It's almost more than one girl can handle. Natasha Friend's fresh, straightforward style makes FOR KEEPS excellent reading entertainment. Her use of humor, down-to-earth characters, and heartfelt relationships will have her fans cheering and any new-comers clamoring for her earlier books. I'm glad to see this new arrival and will be eagerly awaiting more to come. Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mature Teens Dealing With Mature Issues,
By
This review is from: For Keeps (Hardcover)
Spoilers. Josie and her single mom, Kate, are perfectly happy with their small family, bolstered by their friends the Weiss-Longos, a gay male couple who are parents to Wyatt and Josie's best friend, Liv. Until things start to change, and Josie and her mom start to grow up and each find themselves in new territory, Josie dating Matt, and her mom dating Jonathan.
This book is longer and a bit more in-depth than Friend's previous YA books, and Josie is a memorable and relatable teen character, dealing with figuring out who to trust when it comes to family, and how much she's ready to share with her mom, and share her mom. As the daughter of a single mom, I totally got her struggle to accept Jonathan as her mom's boyfriend. Without giving away the entire plot, toward the end, Josie's long-lost father returns to the scene and throws a lot of her preconceived notions of who she is and the story of her birth out of order. One of the best things about this novel is that Josie is mature, to a level I'm not sure most girls her age are, about how she fits in with her family. She looks at her peers and questions why they are so rude to their parents, and when she stops for a moment and looks at her mom as an actual person, not just her mom, she starts to see just how loved and valued she is. Friend ties in the subplots, like Liv's relationship drama, into the core of the story, and while Josie is definitely the protagonist, the other characters are fully fleshed out. This novel deals with teen pregnancy, abortion, teen sexuality and alternative families, but not as "issues," as parts of life, ones that are, ultimately, very human. Excellent and highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Story with Many Lessons,
By CoLiamPet (New York) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: For Keeps (Kindle Edition)
The author sums it up best toward the end of the novel as her protagonists makes a keen observation. We all have faults, peccadilloes if you will, that challenge and shape us and can become so much bigger than we ever imagined. This is a story chock full of such characters and Natasha Friend has used them all to beautifully illustrate a story about self-discovery and personal growth.
There are a number of subplots in this novel, all of which weave together perfectly to tell the story of a young girl coming to terms with the possibility of getting to know her father and his family after they moved away when she was a mere embryo. Josie's paternal grandparents have moved back to the area from Arizona, but she is reluctant to make their acquaintance, especially since she is aware that her mother's pregnancy was somewhat of a secret. During this time, Josie begins a relationship with a boy she has a shaky past with and whom she's not certain she can trust. Her best friend Liv has a pregnancy scare and Josie's mother has begun dating. It's the perfect storm of anxiety and fear. This novel is ripe with internal conflict between Josie's changing relationship with her mother and her fear of stepping into the unknown. But, as usual, fate intervenes in the strangest of ways and the decision whether or not to meet her father and his family is taken from Josie's hands, forcing the confrontation of her fear and resentment. What unfolds is emotional; uplifting and at times sad, but ultimately, at the end, hopeful. There's a smattering of everything in this novel and it may not be suitable for younger teens. The topics range from underage drinking to teen pregnancy; gay parents to casual sex. But everything is tastefully handled by the author and I never felt knocked over the head by any one of those topics. They were all merely pieces of a world in which we all live and I feel they were handled with great tact. The characters Natasha Friend has created are perfectly written and the story offers readers of all types something appealing. There is a cute romance; a great, supportive relationship between BFF's; a strong but evolving mother-daughter relationship; and just the right amount of conflict and turmoil in the exploration of the potential relationship between Josie and her father. What I appreciated most was the ending of this novel. The author wrapped things up nicely, there were no "real" loose ends but there was enough ambiguity to create a fitting end. There was no magical "getting back together" for Josie's parents, which would have made the last quarter of the book seem like one was reading The Notebook (I thought that was were the author was going but was pleased when she didn't). It was a fitting end. There is no way to write an absolute ending to relationships that will continue to grow and evolve and I appreciated that this fact wasn't sugarcoated with a mushy, surreal, happy ending.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
