Weekly Reads: The Carnival at Bray

I checked out The Carnival at Bray from my library the Friday before the ALA Printz Award was announced, so I was pretty thrilled to have it in my possession once it was announce as a Printz Honor. I tend to stay away from historical fiction because it's just not my cup of tea, but this book was set in the 90s and for some reason that seems like just yesterday! This book was an amazing read that tugged on my heart strings and reminded me of the struggle of just being a teen and trying to grow up. Throw in family tragedy, and it becomes much much harder.

Great book.

My rating: 4.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

It's 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she'll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life- altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all, live.