Olivia (Liv) has a strong, sometimes stroppy mum, and her eleven year old self can find this difficult, particularly in the matter of having her ears pierced. Theirs is a happy family, although Liv must help to cope with her older brother, Isaac, who has Asperger's syndrome and lives by specific rules that have been set up to help him cope. (We see him lose it in a shop where Liv has taken him.) This intensely moving novel is divided into weeks - the time before her mother's death, and the time coping with the death and funeral, and the six months after when Liv is having to learn to live without her mother. At first Liv has no idea what is wrong, but senses that life has changed in subtle ways. As time goes on and her mum starts to do unexpected things like teaching her how to make spag bol, and then takes her on a shopping trip that culminates in letting her have her ears pierced, Liv is really confused. When her parents finally tell her and Isaac that their mum is ill and that it is serious, almost a third of the way through the book, they react in their very different ways. Liv has a tendency to get the wrong end of the stick about things, and when she fully understands what is happening she is horrified and frightened, while Isaac simply doesn't understand at all. As the weeks go by, Liv and her friend Alice, whom Liv finally tells, cope as best they can, and Liv is sometimes able to forget the awfulness of her mum's condition. For her twelfth birthday, Liv is given a really good camera. Her father is a professional, and she has always enjoyed taking pictures. She begins to take photography seriously, and takes numbers of pictures of her mum. There is a time when mum must go into hospice care, and while the hospice is excellent, Liv feels it is the wrong place for her mother. When dad brings her home and they are able to surround her with their love and with spring plants from her well-loved garden, she dies peacefully. Liv is totally bereft and feels that somehow her mum has let her down by dying, by not fighting her illness. The remainder of the book is about Liv's reactions, her needs, her thoughts, her dependence on her mother's diaries, which have been given to her, and her own inner turmoil. This turmoil closes out Alice, and Alice being a good friend, waits for six months until Liv is able to contact her again and begin a new life. That six months has been fraught with skiving off school, with an incident that is truly frightening, and with Liv having to accept she needs help. This book is remarkable in many ways, particularly for its ability to get inside a grieving child's mind and get her through the grieving process. Be prepared for tears and for the healing process of love.