Friends To The End

Twelve-year-old Zach is convinced he'll never be happy without his best friend Jeremy by his side. But both of their lives changed with a bang five months ago, and as far as Zach's concerned, it's his fault Jeremy will never see his twelfth birthday.

When Zach moves with his family to a Chicago suburb, he quickly becomes friends with a group of thrill-seeking kids trying to find a disappearing haunted house. But Zach's not worried. He doesn't believe in ghosts, so he follows them into a wild, dangerous encounter that becomes a battle to decide what's real and what's not.

 

my review...

A nicely written story about a young boy moving with his parents and having to make new friends. Zach lost his BFF not too long ago and is really handling it by not handling it at all.

If this sounds like a sad book or a self-help book, it isn’t. It’s true that it is a story about handling guilt, making new friends, and handling change. Yet with the POV being a young boy, this book is about a young boy's thoughts. The "all tangled up kind of thoughts" young kids have.  Parents, a ballerina wallpapered bedroom, being the new kid at school, and fear the teacher will call on you, are all in Zach’s thoughts. It has humor and the thoughts of everyday life mixed in with a sweet and serious subject. I think that’s what lightens it up and makes it such a good read.  

I think this is a great book for tweenage readers, maybe age 8 through 14.  It looks as if this is C. L. Colyer’s first published book. I hope we see more to come.

read an excerpt...

My bewildered gaze slithered from Dom to Josh, finally coming to a stop on Morgan as I tried to decide if they were crazy.

“If the house is invisible, how do you expect to find it?” I asked.

Morgan sat on the stoop next to me. “It’s not always invisible. My brothers saw it once. They said it’s a big house with a long porch. It vanished before they could set foot on the first step, and I’m glad, too.”

“Why? What would have happened if they were on the steps?” I asked. Not because I believed an old ghost story had any truth to it, but I was curious to know what she’d say.

Morgan had to pick her jaw up from the walkway before she could answer, and when she did her voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “If they had been on the porch or worse—” she swallowed loudly “—inside, they would have disappeared with it.”

 

about C.L. Colyer... 

C.L. Colyer found her love for writing in first grade when her class was sent to the library and asked to find a book for their first book report. While she doesn’t still have this book report, she’s very proud to say she got an A on it. Her favorite thing about the book was that it had no words. That’s right, not one! That gave her the freedom to interpret the pictures in any way she wanted and write her own story.

This sparked her love for writing essays. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she sat down and penned her first novel. This story has a special place in her heart because it’s the story that helped her discover her passion for writing. She has since written several books, many of which may never see the light of day, but all of which helped her learn to combine her passion for writing with her fascination with all things mythical.  You’ll find examples of this in her novels.

She lives in Illinois with her family.

 

Keep in Touch:

 

Website: https://cheriecolyer.com/children/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cherie-Colyer-author-250631921629169

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CherieColyer

Instagram: www.instagram.com/cherie_colyer/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21748654.C_L_Colyer

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/C-L-Colyer/e/B09C6JPT3X/

Bookbub author page: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/cherie-colyer

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