Let Me Fix That for You by Janice Erlbaum

Ultimately this is a book about the narrator's journey and the dangers that attend the urge within us all to believe we can save another soul. Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman's quest to save a girl's life-and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way. But just as Janice was on the verge of becoming the girl's legal guardian, she made a shocking discovery: Sam was sicker than anyone knew, in ways nobody could have imagined. Soon Janice found herself caring deeply for Sam, following her through detoxes and psych wards, halfway houses and hospitals, becoming ever more manically driven to save her from the sickness and sadness leftover from Sam's terrible past. A brilliant nineteen-year-old junkie savant, the product of a horrifically abusive home, Sam had been surviving alone on the streets since she was twelve and was now struggling for sobriety against the adverse health effects of long-term drug abuse. Now thirty-four years old and a successful writer, she'd changed her life for the better now she wanted to help someone else-someone like the girl she'd once been. And, in another subversion of the thriller trope, the corpses in her books are usually male.Visit Janice Erlbaum's website.And every week, there was the unspoken question, the one I didn't know enough to ask myself: Have you found her yet? The one who reminds you of you? Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Abbott writes about these very specific kinds of power struggles between women, these overlooked outlets for female aggression. In The End of Everything, sisters compete in an unspoken rivalry for a father’s attention. In Dare Me, a cheerleader battles with her coach for dominance over the other girls. In Give Me Your Hand, there’s a professional rivalry at play, and one woman wants to renew an old bond forged in school, while the other woman wants to avoid it. Abbott’s plots aren’t about women fighting over men – her women (and her girls) fight each other for reasons I recognize from my own fraught relationships with women – reasons like power, envy, resentment, or boredom. Like the other books of hers I’ve read, this one centers around a screwed-up dynamic between women, which is a subject I adore. Her reply: I’m currently reading Megan Abbott’s newest thriller, Give Me Your Hand, about a frenemy-ship between two female lab researchers that leads to some dead bodies. Twelve-year-old Gladys Burke may not have many friends, but at least she has her empire. Recently I asked Erlbaum about what she was reading. A Bank Street Best Childrens Book of 2020 Janice Erlbaums Let Me Fix That for You is a quirky, touching, and laugh-out-loud middle-grade novel about a girl capable of fixing everything but her own life. Janice Erlbaum is the author of two books for tweens, Lucky Little Things, and Let Me Fix That For You (coming in 2019), the memoirs Girlbomb and Have You Found Her, and the novel for adults I, Liar.

Let Me Fix That for You by Janice Erlbaum