Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine 216 pages

A touching story brimming with sadness, chance meetings, a damaged family and an unlikely romance is crafted for the female teen reader. Rowan may only be fifteen, but she is the chief caretaker of her family after her beloved brother's accidental death, which has fractured the once happy family. Dad is gone. Mom is still at home but is totally not functioning as a parent. So Rowan tries to care for her young sister. One day, a strange boy forces a photograph negative on her insisting that she had dropped it. Magically this causes a chain of reactions -- mostly good ones. Rowan makes a new best friend, gains a mysterious boy friend and learns about her brother's secrets. The ending promises hope for all and new definitions of the word "family".