Tiny Infinities by J.H. Diehl, 2018

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When Alice's dad moves out, leaving her with her troubled mother, she does the only thing that feels right: she retreats to her family's old Renaissance tent in the backyard, determined to live there until her dad comes home. In an attempt to keep at least one part of her summer from changing, Alice focuses on her quest to swim freestyle fast enough to get on her swim team's record board. But summers contain multitudes, and soon Alice meets an odd new friend, Harriet, whose obsession with the school's science fair is equal only to her conviction that Alice's best stroke is backstroke, not freestyle. Most unexpected of all is an unusual babysitting charge, Piper, who is mute—until Alice hears her speak. A funny and honest middle-grade novel, this sharply observed depiction of family, friendship, and Alice's determination to prove herself—as a babysitter, as a friend, as a daughter, as a person—rings loud and true.

(352 pages)

My parents haven't gotten divorced, thank goodness, but I imagine that if they did I would probably behave a lot like Alice does.

I mean, running away to the backyard and swearing to live in a tent until your dad moves back in totally seems like a reasonable response to learning that your parents are separating. Is that just me? Maybe? Ok.

Anyway, I feel like Alice is a very normal girl in many ways. Besides her strong response to her parents' separation, she tries to keep the summer as normal as possible. She focuses on her passion for swimming, and her goal to get on the swim team record board, and on babysitting her young neighbor.

I think my favorite storyline was the one with her parents, just because it was so sad and frustrating and . . . real. Beyond that, I liked the babysitting storyline just because Piper is such a precious little girl and I was rooting for them to figure out how best to help her (though the way they did was so cheesy/unrealistic I had to swallow some serious disbelief). I wasn't a huge fan of her big brother Owen, the illegitimate pre-marriage son of her father who seemed nice enough but also like kind of a player (and seriously, does a MG book need a character with such a morally iffy backstory?).

As for Harriet, I didn't really like her at all. I'm kind of tired of the trope of "quirky best friends" who say whatever pops into their head and acts like kind of a jerk but gets away with it because they're so "smart." Harriet just really annoyed me, probably more than was entirely reasonable. But I really appreciated that she kind of annoyed Alice too, and that Harriet didn't entirely get away with everything she did and said.

All in all, I liked reading Tiny Infinities. At places, I was really swept away by it; at others, I was merely entertained (or vaguely annoyed with characters in it). But it's a good book, and if you're interested then I do recommend you pick it up.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.