Review: Someone Else's Life

Title: Someone Else’s Life

Author: Katie Dale

Series: None

Release Date: February 14^th, 2012

Number of Pages: 512

Publisher: Delacorte books for Young Readers

Souce: NetGalley

When 17-year-old Rosie's mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington's Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty percent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when Rosie tells her mother's best friend, "Aunt Sarah," that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie wasn't her real mother after all. Rosie was swapped at birth with a sickly baby who was destined to die. 

Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, joining her ex-boyfriend on his gap year travels, to find her birth mother in California. But all does not go as planned. As Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonizing decision of her own, one which will be the most heart breaking and far-reaching of all.

I was quite surprised by this book. It wasn’t that I wasn’t expecting to really enjoy it (I really couldn’t wait to read it, based on the premises). It was more that the story itself kept me guessing. I was expecting the story to go one way and BAM, Katie Dale made Rosie’s life and Rosie’s choices a lot harder. That’s one of the thing that I loved about this book. It surprised me so many times.

One of the main aspects of the book is the Huntington’s. It wasn’t something I had heard of before, so I did appreciate that Katie Dale took the time to explain what it was, without it sounding out of place. That information was well incorporate to the story.  That disease is simply terrifying, if you think of it. Other than already having been through the pain of seeing her mother die, now she may have 50/50 chance of suffering from it, well, if she was her biological daughter.

Rosie’s character broke my heart. It is unimaginable all the pain she must have gone through, first by losing her mother, and then learning that her mother, Trudie, isn’t her real mother. After all, it was like she lost her all over again. That’s one of the reason why I could understand why Rosie wanted to go through everything she did, to find her real mother. She needed answer, and she needed something to make go on. She just lost the woman who raised her, only to learn that her life was based on a lie her “Aunt” Sarah created. Still, Andy was one of the characters that really surprised me. I find it hard to believe he stood by her through so much, as she wasn’t always that honest with him. Of course, there are other characters that stood out for me. Yet, I can’t really talk about them without giving away too much, so I guess you will have to discover them on your on.

Katie Dale really impressed me with this novel. Even though it is a pretty lengthy novel, I read it in a matter of hours, because I simply couldn’t put it down. It was beautifully written, and the emotions simply kept me reading, as I was hoping thing would finally get better for Rosie and the others.

Someone else’s life is a novel I would definitely recommend to fan of contemporary.