Changes

|genre=Teens

|summary=Completely gorgeous. Valentine comes right out of left field in her kitchen sink dramas with a twist. Broken Soup has a tremendously sympathetic and engaging central character and huge dollops of intense love and pain. It's easy to read, but never simple. This book has it all in under three hundred pages.

|rating=5

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=256

|publisher=Harper Collins Children's Books

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007229658</amazonuk>

|amazonus=<amazonus>0007229658</amazonus>

}}

When the strange but handsome boy with an American accent accosts Rowan in the convenience store, the world stops for a horrible moment of embarrassment. Everyone's looking. He's gorgeous. She's maladroit. The negative he's trying to give her isn't hers. In the end, Rowan takes it, desperate to get back below the radar. Rowan likes it below the radar. She doesn't want to be noticed. There's too much at stake. What if anyone notices that her mother's not coping since Jack died? What if someone says six-year-old Stroma is too young to be looked after by her fifteen-year-old sister, even a sister as competent as Rowan? What if her temporarily absent father notices? He'll never return to a wife in the midst of a nervous breakdown. And then the family won't be simply Jack-less, it'll be Dad-less permanently. It'll be Mum-less, Rowan-less, Stroma-less. There won't be a family at all. Under the radar is good.