My Thoughts

I don't think I disliked anything on how the style of the book wad written. I really do love this book because it tells you from another persons real point of view and their experience in their life. She made sure all the events flowed great to make a wonderful story line. To be honest I would not change a thing to her story because she adds stuff that actually happened and it helps you understand more of the authors life and more of how indigenous people are treated. That is something that you can't change but you can help move forward with things. My final thoughts about this book is that when the girls go to residential school, it reminds me of some of things iv'e learned in Native Studies. There's good stories and bad stories about residential schools and the bad ones leave memories and marks on people and they have to life with it for the rest of their lives. Other events in the book remind me of the 60's scoop where they would take indigenous children away from their families and place them in non-indigenous families because they think that their parents are not capable of taking care of them anymore. 

Overall Experience

I really enjoyed this book because it had a really great flow to it and those kinds of books makes me want to read more of it or more similar to it. It kept me engaged at all times and I honestly loved it. It really did meet my expectations. My teacher and others didn't lie that is was a great book and had a great story behind it. would probably recommend this book to my sister when she hits high school because I know for a fact she will learn Indigenous studies, and if i recommend this book, it as great examples of events that had happened to people maybe years ago and even happened to people today. I hope when she reads this book she will understand more or what has happened in the world. I think the overall message of this book is that people are really racist towards indigenous peoples and that others abuse it so much that they either kidnap woman, make them depressed and make them feel bad for being indigenous. There's nothing wrong with being indigenous at all, its just you will run into those who are really racist and those who don't understand that you've been on earth before them.

The Climax

By  the middle of the book, April had finished high school and got herself an apartment of her own just a few blocks away from where she worked. April is an assistance at a lawyer office. There she met a man named Bob. They started hanging out lots and lots. They both seemed to fall in love with one another and Bob purposed to April. She said yes! Cheryl did not like the idea one bit. When Bob had mentioned that he would love April to move in with him, she was totally down with that. When Cheryl found out that April was moving in with him, she was disgusted because she had gut feeling that things wouldn't work out because Bob was not indigenous. April ignored Cheryl and moved in with him anyways. Things were going great at first, but when Bob's mother and Bob's "friend" Heather were talking, Heather had said that she and Bob were in love that April needs to go. April was home that day, his mother and Heather didn't know that at all. When April had confronted Bob about it, he told her the truth. April had felt heart broken and stupid for not listening to Cheryl about him and his family. I think the author did good about the climax and about his part because it shows that even though you find an idea great, there's going to be someone close to you that has a gut feeling that it isn't a very good idea, but you end up doing it and than you realize you were wrong and they were right. The setting of this book took place in Winnipeg, and the story is set in 1983. Iv'e only been to Winnipeg once when i was about 12 for soccer. I think its believable of where the story took place because its the authors own experience. Besides April moving away and such, Cheryl seems to be having an alcohol problem and it seems that when April had left Cheryl had been going out lots, to the bars and the streets. This particular situation reminds me of my friend and me having a conversation about boys. i would tell her that this one boy was no good, and I would constantly tell her this but she wouldn't listen to me at all and she would end up feeling hurt all the time. I ended up ending our friendship because she wouldn't appreciate my advice or help at all.

Character Development

I think that April, Cheryl and the other characters are well developed at this point. The author did a good job at portraying their own point of views of life at this point in the book. I think the characters are believable, I have some suspicion about April and Cheryl's relationship. They seem to lie to each other just so the other does not know the truth, because if one of them told the complete truth it would hurt them. In reality though, telling the truth is better than lying. The truth may hurt more but at least now you know why someone lied maybe to protect you. In my opinion, April and Cheryl are both interesting to me because they remind me of my sister and myself. It seems that my sister Paige has more of her life controlled than I do. April seems to live life in a flow, just like me. The beginning of the book, Cheryl seemed all ready for life but towards the middle her life seems to be going downhill. Paige's life right doesn't not seem to be going downhill so she's good. The story is being told from April's perception and Cheryl's perception. I do trust the narrator because parts of the story actually happened to her and her own sisters. I find the story flowing very well, it has lots of things going on but I think the author did a great job at making the story flow so it wasn't just here is one event and the others. She made sure it flowed perfectly so the reader keeps reading instead of being left with nothing. I don't think I found any holes in plot. I'm very happy the book and how the author had written it from her own experiences. 

Initial reactions

I am enjoying the book so far. The main characters are April and Cheryl. Cheryl is the type of person or perhaps character who is both realistic and curious about a lot of things such as her cultural background, the "native way of living", and how the power of the "whites" over ruled them. April is the character who is self-aware of things. She likes to try to take of other people especially Cheryl. She feels the need to fix things when stuff goes wrong. There is also a few characters that get involved with both of their lives, such as Bob who she marries April right away. He's very wealthy. Later on she gets involved with a man named Roger. He is a very kind person and is very loving towards April. He supports her with all the problems that are happening or that have happened.  I'm surprised when April just gave up looking for her parents. I understand how she wouldn't want to continue looking for them because they were alcoholics and she kept that from Cheryl for a very long time. I predict that the two sisters will eventually be split apart a for some time because of living with different foster parents. I also predict that one of the sisters is going to carry the alcoholism with them when they get older. It always seems that one of the many siblings carry some sort of abuse, or alcoholism with them from their parents. The story is set in Winnipeg. This book reminds me of Residential School. From pulling Indigenous children from their families to attend the school for 10 months with sometimes not being able to see you parents at all. This book is sorta doing the same but removing children from broken families and putting them in white foster families. What will happen to the sisters later on? What will happen to their real parents? 

Individual profile

I typically like to read mystery books or crime related books. I get more engaged into those kinds of books because I also watch a lot of crime t.v shows. I don't read often, I only read in school.  I should probably read outside of school more often to enhance my reading skills. In school I typically ready poetry books related to the subject area such as, Shakespeare and or Hamlet. It was an okay selection, I mean, i'm not a very big fan of  poetry but we are expected to do poetry in school. I expect that I would understand more of the English language from back then and be able to use that skill to read more books like that. I chose this book because my teacher explained to me that it was more of my interest than the other books that we could pick from.