All We Know of Love

A boldly original tale about a girl who journeys through love and loss to find her mother — and discovers that everyone has a story to tell, including herself.

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Description

“I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother.”

Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie Gordon’s mother walked out mid-sentence, before she finished what she was going to say. Now Natalie is traveling twenty-four hours on a bus to Florida to find her mother, to find herself, to find out something about love. Along the way, Natalie struggles to understand her relationship with Adam, a boy she pines for with near-obsession, and to her surprise, she meets people with stories like her own, stories about giving love and getting lost in the desire to be wanted. Acclaimed middle-grade novelist Nora Raleigh Baskin makes her young adult debut with a deeply resonant novel about secrets held and secrets shared, about having the courage to uncover all we know — and don’t know — of love.

 

 

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In her first YA novel, Baskin’s (The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah) portrait of a teen questioning the meaning of love is as candid and alluring as her books for middle-grade readers…. Natalie realizes, even minor connections are what are important in life: “Even the temporary, even the transient, even the people who you are never going to see again but who exist because we need them to, because we are human.” Ages 14-up. (Aug.)

Publisher’s Weekly

The people Natalie encounters along her journey have side stories that reveal their experiences with love, which helps readers explore the different kinds of love. Female readers will connect with Natalie, especially her emotional vulnerability and her desire to be truly loved by her loser boyfriend. Reviewer: Alissa Lauzon

VOYA

During the trip, Natalie encounters a variety of people with whom she briefly interacts, but who leave an impression on her. Their stories are inserted into the narrative as cameos, and she comes to understand that she can be loved for who she is-and not because she was a girl whose mother did not love her enough to stay. A moving coming-of-age story.-Sharon Morrison, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, OK

School Library Journal