A wonderful story that encapsulates how family does not equal shared blood but shared love. Though the protagonists are both young, I enjoyed their hearts, growth, and determination. I recommend this book often to young readers at the library, as well as family book clubs.

Loved this book. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review. I messed up and didn't get this one downloaded before it was archived, so I had to wait to get a copy. I am glad I followed through. It was a lovely book that touched on so many areas that are relevant to our children today. Basically, it is about children, "sisters" with two mothers and the hardships they survived at the hands of an unaccepting society, extended family, and a loss to devastating cancer. What is the right thing to do? Can they all agree?

I loved, loved, loved this book. I couldn't put it down and read it all in one sitting today. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and then it found a way to crawl inside my heart and wrap around it. The story and the characters are going to stay there for a long time.

This was an oddly riveting story, the sort where the plot slowly unveils itself, and more depth about its characters is revealed with each new encounter. I say it's odd only because it's about a pair of siblings stealing their mother's ashes in order to spread them according to their dead mother's wishes. That's not exactly typical fodder for a quest story, though this is, at its heart, a quest story. The emotional depth of the story is impressive. It's one of those stories where there aren't any villains, only people with clashing motivations vying to get their way. Even when characters are facing off, there's an undeniable sense that they are all doing what they think is best for the others involved.

I really liked the story. It's portrayed in a sensitive manner befitting the subject matter. The characters are all vivid, multi-dimensional beings, and nothing is emotionally withheld. It allows the reader to step inside of the experience of a child with lesbian parents and grandparents that are not accepting of their lifestyle, as well as the emotional turmoil that arises from the early death of a parent when there are issues of paternity involved. It's a powerful book, one that I was very glad to have had the opportunity to experience. Well done all the way through.

Ashes to Asheville by Sarah Dooley is the story of two sisters on a mission: to fulfill their Mama Lacy’s wish to return to the city of Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville was the city where she and her partner Shannon were accepted by their neighbors, a community where they hoped to raise their daughters, Zany and Fella. The five years they spent there were the happiest of their lives. But after Lacy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the family moved back to their hometown in West Virginia.

In that small town, under the stress of illness and the pointed disapproval of their relationship, the family began to fracture even before Lacy’s death. Lacy’s mother claimed only Fella as kin, because her daughter was Fella’s birth mother. Shannon’s mother, Granny Culvert, was more willing to accept both girls, but Mrs. Madison with her money and larger house could offer Fella more than she and Shannon could in their tiny apartment in a poor neighborhood. Shannon, in addition to her overwhelming grief, after Lacy dies lacked the financial resources to fight over custody of Fella.

When sixteen-year-old Zany turns up late one night, at Mrs. Madison’s home with a grand plan to steal Mama Lacy’s ashes off the fireplace mantle and sprinkle them in the city she loved, Fella goes along. She’s still in her pajamas and she’s accidentally stolen Mrs. Madison’s poodle Haberdashery too, but Zany is a force of nature Fella is unable to resist.

Before long, they join forces with Adam, another teen who’s also on a difficult personal journey. Together, and sometimes separately, they make their way toward Asheville. Snowy mountain roads, breaking news bulletins featuring their pictures, and a midnight visit to a veterinary clinic are just some of the obstacles in their way.

Ashes to Asheville is ultimately a family love story, as Dooley shows in flashbacks the relationship between the two moms, their comfortable years in Asheville, and the challenges Shannon and her daughters face after Lacy’s death. The sisters’ journey takes their family in new directions, to a place where they can find healing after loss.

Dooley lays out the legal barriers facing gay parents in the years before the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision and does it without being didactic. Lacy and Shannon wanted to be married, hoped to someday have a wedding, but they ran out of time, leaving Mama Shannon without legal recognition as the spouse of Lacy and mother of Fella.

Just as books about the American Civil Rights Movement offer glimpses of the complexity of school desegregation, books like Ashes to Asheville show young readers how issues related to gay marriage affect families. This idea, that the laws of the land affect the day-to-day lives of all of us, is a powerful one for young people to grasp, one that demonstrates the need to pay close attention and to identify issues for which they themselves might become advocates.

Zany and Fella will steal your heart and having it breaking for them. They are on the ultimate road trip to fulfill one of their mother's dying wish of where she wanted her ashes. Along the way they meet some unexpected characters and a lot of crazy things happen. But they also learn more about each other and what it takes to make a family. A good road trip book and a great one on sister dynamics.

The timing of this one is rather unfortunate. It lacks the atmosphere to imply history to young readers but the subject is less relevant to them in the face of marriage equality. Instead of striking the reader as historical and important it feels vaguely behind the times. The characters are not strong enough to carry the novel past that issue.