Book Review: Send Me a Sign

Send Me a Sign

By: Tiffany Schmidt

Published by: Walker Children's

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Genre: YA contemporary

384 pages 

Buy it on Amazon, IndieBound

 or Barnes and Noble
Source: Galley kindly provided by publisher


My thoughts: 
Send Me a Sign is a sobfest, girl-with-cancer book. But here's the thing: I wanted to roll my eyes at it, but it's hard to roll your eyes when they keep running across line after line of writing, and you can't find a good stopping place. Because with Send Me a Sign, the only good stopping place is the last page.

The main character, Mia, is gorgeous, popular, smart, and oblivious to just how perfect her life is- until it isn't perfect anymore. We get to watch the house of cards fall. It doesn't all collapse at once, though; it comes down in slow motion, one piece at a time. Once Mia is stripped of all the glory of her former self, she can finally see who she really is and what is really important.

There is a love triangle in this book, though it's not the kind that makes you want to throw the book across the room. And I'm not sure it even qualifies as a triangle, since Mia isn't aware of one boy's feelings for the majority of the book. These two boys really are equally wonderful, and neither stoops to worse than mild verbal attacks of the other. Another reason I couldn't put the book down is that the neighbor boy bff is SO much like Adam Wilde in If I Stay. I picked the book up to sneak 10 minutes over coffee at 5 AM because I was at a really good scene featuring him.

Contemporary isn't my favorite, but once in a while, it's nice to have an excuse and permission to ugly cry. A hot boy is a bonus. Send Me a Sign delivers both, with a side of girl friendship. It's the best kind of reading indulgence. I recommend to a girl who's up for a guilty pleasure- one that you wouldn't be embarrassed if your mom caught you reading it.

Summary from GoodReads:

Mia is always looking for signs. A sign that she should get serious with her soccer-captain boyfriend. A sign that she’ll get the grades to make it into an Ivy-league school. One sign she didn’t expect to look for was: “Will I survive cancer?” It’s a question her friends would never understand, prompting Mia to keep her illness a secret. The only one who knows is her lifelong best friend, Gyver, who is poised to be so much more. Mia is determined to survive, but when you have so much going your way, there is so much more to lose. From debut author Tiffany Schmidt comes a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of one girl’s search for signs of life in the face of death.