Middle Grade Monday: Meant to Be by Jo Knowles

Image: Candlewick Press

Meant to Be by Jo Knowles. 218 p. Candlewick Press, March, 2022. 9781536210323. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.

Happy Monday! I hope you had a terrific weekend. I had hoped to get more yard work done, but the weather did not cooperate. Sunday was so cold and moist and raw. I didn't come close to closing my rings. I didn't get much indoor work done either, but I did take a nice nap in the late morning, thanks to rising at 4AM after a terrible night's sleep.

Middle Grade Monday wishes a belated book birthday to Meant to Be by Jo Knowles. This is a companion novel to Where the Heart Is, which was published in 2019. Ivy and her family have moved to an apartment called Applewood Heights and everyone hates it but her. Sure she has to share a tiny bedroom with her older sister, Rachel, but she has friends she can visit easily at last. And they love the show, Make It to Bake It as much as she does! Each week the three gather at Lucas' apartment to watch the show with his dad, who uses a walker and has mobility issues. Then, they figure out how to make the dish with less expensive ingredients, since most of the residents of the building don't have a lot of extra cash. The trio usually find a work-around and they share their creation with whatever resident contributed ingredients. She also loves to visit Donnalyn, the building's super, who lets Ivy really help with real tools. Ivy is happy, except she'd really like to know more about Alice's missing mother and she wants to build Lucas' father a wheelchair, but he's not interested. Her insistence on helping her friends leads to alienation instead, and Ivy has some difficult lessons to learn about being a good friend.

This is a sweet, gentle coming-of-age story centered around family and friendship. Fans of Where the Heart Is will be thrilled that Ivy got her own book, but it Meant to Be stands alone nicely. It's the perfect tween novel featuring an imperfect yet endearing main character readers will root for.