In this YA thriller, Helen FitzGerald's (Amelia O'Donohue Is SO Not a Virgin) narrator is a 16-year-old living in an orphanage who, ironically, discovers she has a whole family when her birth mother dies.
Abigail Thom lives a hardscrabble existence in Scotland in an institution for orphans, whom she refers to as "Unloved Nobodies." Like many orphans, she's invented a fantasy mother in her head. That invention is shattered when she's informed that her birth mother is dead.
Her mother's effects contain a letter, a one-way ticket to the U.S., money--and a mystery. It turns out Abigail has a father and a sister she never knew in Los Angeles. Her mother's letter urges Abigail to find them and solve the mystery of her abandonment at birth, while also hinting there is a larger conspiracy dictating the course of all their lives. In L.A., Abigail quickly becomes close to her 18-year-old sister, Becky. Becky plays the role of the dilettante rich girl by day and takes part in an underground graffiti movement by night. The mystery hinted at in her mother's letter becomes intertwined with Becky's graffiti--and a murder. Abigail must untangle lies old and new in order to discover who she really is, and who her mother really was. --Jessica Bushore, former public librarian and freelance writer