By: Christina Baker KlinePlot: About a girl Niamh (pronounced Neev) whose parents die in a fire and is placed on the orphan train. It goes through different cities in hopes that all the children will be 'adopted'. There is also an alternate timeline in the present about Molly, who is in foster care, and how she meets Niamh and begins to learn about her past.
My Thoughts: I was not a fan of Molly and her timeline at all. The writer may as well have written: "Feel bad for her!" the way she kept carrying on about how bad she had it. I could probably have done without that whole story arch all together. The only part worth reading was in the past. That story was dang depressing and I actually did feel bad for Niamh. Although it was really depressing at times, it's not like that throughout the whole book or else I probably couldn't handle it.
I hate, hate, HATED the ending. First off, it made me dislike Vivian/Niamh when she was the one character I had liked the entire book. Secondly, the way the author just threw in a missing relative at the end of the book, just so she could resolve it immediately and have a 'happy' ending was crap. It was like the author had no idea how to end the story so she just threw this crazy random mess together last minute and called it good. The whole thing just made me mad. And then there was no resolution for Molly! Even though I didn't even like her I wanted there to be some type of conclusion. But no, her story just morphed into Vivian's. Sorry Molly, no ending for you.
Rating: 2/5 With a different ending and no Molly it would have been more my style.