BLOG TOUR - REVIEW & GIVEAWAY: Finding Mia by Rachel K. Burke

Author: Rachel K. Burke

Genre: Contemporary/New Adult

Release date: January 2012

Tour organized by: AToMR Tours

Intelligent and fiercely independent, sixteen-year-old Mia Marchette has never had a childhood. After her father’s disappearance when she was six, she has alone borne the burden of her mother’s bipolar disorder.

When her mother is institutionalized after a failed suicide attempt, Mia is abruptly forced to live with the estranged father she has not known for ten years. She is shocked to discover that he has created a new, picture-perfect life for himself, and is now living with a stepmother and a half-sister Mia never knew she had. Together, Mia and her new family must face the bitterness, mistakes, and long-hidden secrets that threaten to destroy their precarious happiness.

Finding Mia follows Mia's journey as she searches to find the unanswered questions from her past, leading to her own self-discovery.

Ultimately, this is a story of confronting pain and finding freedom, of letting go and learning to search for love in unexpected places.

About the Author:

Rachel was born and raised in Boston, MA. She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

She graduated from Bridgewater University in 2011 with a B.A. in Communications and Media Studies.

Rachel's work has appeared in Prevention Magazine, Worcester Magazine and Starpulse News Entertainment.

Rachel Burke | Twitter | Facebook

Buy Links: Amazon

My Thoughts:

Having a family member who suffered from Bipolar Disorder, I was a bit undecided at first as to whether I wanted to read Finding Mia. I worried about the angle that the storyline would take and if it would hit too close to home for me. But in the end I decided to go with it and reasoned that if the story was too hard to read I could pull up stumps and call it a day. But this was so much more than a story about a person with Bipolar. While the constant of the Bipolar is there, Finding Mia focused much more on the impact that the illness has on the family.

Mia Marchette has had to grow up fast. Without a father, because he left when Mia was little and a mother who because of her illness struggles to function in a normal capacity on a daily basis. Arriving home from school one afternoon, Mia finds her mother unconscious after an overdose. Her mother is placed in a facility to get help for her illness and Mia is told that she will be going to live with her father Keith. A father that she has had no contact with and who she finds has created a whole new life for himself which includes a new wife Suzanne and a daughter. 

Mia is filed with so many different emotions as she struggles to come to terms with the changes in her life and the impact that those changes are having. She has always wanted a normal family life with rules and expectations, but when she finally has them she completely rebels against them.

I can't say that I was immediately in love with the characters. At first I struggled with why Keith had left his family. Unless you have lived with someone who has a mental illness it's very hard to understand how truly difficult it can be, so it was more why he left Mia and had no contact with her. I felt that Suzanne was very gung- ho in her approach to Mia and I leaned more with Keith and his softer approach. However over the course of the book I found that they had all wormed their way into my heart, especially Suzanne. And that is thanks to the wonderful writing of Rachel K. Burke and the insights  into the thoughts of Keith, his wife Suzanne and for me, the journal entries written by Mia. 

Finding Mia is not just a story of mental illness and it's impact. It's a story of friendship, guilt, forgiveness, addiction, love and the surprises that can come your way just by opening your heart!! A truly wonderful story!!

5/5 Stars!

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