Book ~ "Safe Harbour" (2019) Christina Kilbourne

From Goodreads ~ Fourteen-year-old Harbour is living in a tent in a Toronto ravine with her dog, a two-month supply of canned tuna and an eccentric reading list. She’s not homeless, she tells herself. She’s merely waiting for her home - a thirty-six-foot sailboat - to arrive with her father at the helm. Why should she worry when the clouds give her signs that assure her that she’s safe and protected? 

When her credit card gets declined, phone contact from her father stops and summer slips into a frosty fall, Harbour is forced to face reality and accept the help of a homeless girl named Lise to survive on the streets. Lise shows Harbour how to panhandle and navigate the shelter system while trying to unravel Harbour's mysterious past. But if Harbour tells her anything, the consequences could be catastrophic. 

Fourteen-year-old Harbour's mother passed away when she was young.  Since then, she and her father have been living on their sailboat, sailing from port to port.  He drops her off with a phone, a credit card, some cash and her dog, Tuff, in a port city in the States and tells her to catch a bus and make her way to Toronto, where her mother was from.  He is going to sail there and join her in about five weeks.  While Harbour waits for her dad, she and Tuff camp out in a tent in a ravine, keeping a low profile.

Harbour meets Lise, a homeless girl who spends her days panhandling and knows where to get handouts of food, and spends her nights in a shelter.  When her credit card is declined, she is running out of money and her father is not answering his phone, Harbour must accept the help of Lise while she stubbornly waits for her father and never gives up hope that he will come for her even as summer becomes fall and then becomes winter.

This is the second book I've read by this author and I liked it, though I'm older that its target audience.   I liked the writing style ... it is written in first person perspective in Harbour's voice.  It's not a happy story and I'll admit that at chapter 13 I did jump ahead to the end (chapter 18) as I wanted to see if there would be a happy ending ... and then I jumped back to chapter 13 and carried on.  I live in Toronto so it was fun that it was set here because I tried to figure out where the action was happening.

Book ~ "Detached" (2016) Christina Kilbourne

From Goodreads ~ Anna has always been so level-headed, so easy-going, so talented and funny. How could anyone have guessed she wanted to die?

Anna is not like other people. For one thing, she’s been an accomplished artist since she was a preschooler. For another, she’s always felt like she didn’t belong: not with other kids, not with her family, not in her body. It isn’t until her grandparents are killed in a tragic accident, however, that Anna starts to feel untethered. She begins to wonder what it would be like if she didn’t exist and the thought of escaping the aimless drifting is the only thing that brings her comfort.

When Anna overdoses on prescription pain killers the doctors realize she has been suffering from depression and start looking for a way to help her out of the desperate black hole she never thought she would escape. It’s then that rock bottom comes into sight and the journey back to normal begins. 

From the outside, it seems like teenager Anna has everything.  She has caring parents, she lives in a nice house, she is an accomplished artist and she has friends who care about her.  Then why is she so unhappy and wants to kill herself?

Anna is ready to die.  The story is about her trying to figure out what the best way would be so she considers them all ... falling off a bridge, jumping in front of traffic, drowning, hanging, etc.  As she's doing this, she tries to live her life normally so no realizes how unhappy she really is.  She finally decides that an overdose of pain killers would be the best way and that's what she eventually does.

This is the first book I've read by this author.  It's not a happy story and I think the author handled it well.  In the introduction at the beginning of the book, Kilbourne said that it was a hard book to write and she didn't want to write it at first.  But she was approached by a mother whose son had committed suicide and she wanted a book she cold use in her outreach efforts.

I liked the writing style.  It is written in first person perspective from Anna, Aliya (Anna's best friend) and Anna's mother's points of view (the chapters are labeled so you know whose voice it is).  I think the target audiences can be teenagers (so they'll ask for help if they start feeling as Anna did) and parents of teenagers so they'll know what signs to look for.