Roam is a YA novel that revolves around homelessness, family and friendship. I really liked how the author portrayed how easy it was for the MC and her family to become homeless and the ways in which they struggled. I became more aware of what homeless people go through and what services are available for them.

Roam is also a book about family and although there is conflict within the MC's family, in the end, they band together and try to take equal responsibility. As well, I like how positive friendships and relationship were highlighted in the story.

I also think the flashbacks were utilised very well. Things in the MC's current life trigger memories from similar but traumatic situations and from this we gradually learn about her past and what she has been through to make it hard to trust her friends with the truth of her homelessness.

The novel ends off on a very hopeful note, with the message that one shouldn't be ashamed or embarassed of things that are out of their control.

As far as the writing and characters go, I thought it was quite good. Nothing special but they really carried the message and ideas well, which I think are the star qualities of this book.

Overall, Roam is quick read that shines a light on the underrepresented issue of homelessness.

3.75 stars

Life can go wrong quickly. For Abby's family, it starts with step father Nick's hours being cut, her mother having an affair with a coworker and losing her teaching job, Nick losing his job, her mother having a seizure, and hospital bills making the family behind on their rent. Before Abby knows it, her parents and younger sister Amber have left Omaha and are living in their van in Rochester, Minnesota. They park in the Wal-Mart parking lot while they wait to get into a shelter, trying to stay warm and eating at a soup kitchen. Abby goes back to high school to resume her senior year, and immediately falls afoul of Trish, the most popular girl in school, especially when Zach, Trish's ex-boyfriend, starts dating Abby. Still, there are good things. Classes go well, Abby enjoys choir, and she makes a strong core of supportive friends who even loan her clothing to go to the homecoming dance. The family gets into the shelter, but has to leave after two weeks. Abby has a job delivering newspapers, and her parents are trying to find employment. Nick gets part time work as a custodian at a church. Things are bearable until Amber and then Abby get very ill and winter becomes colder. Desperate, the family starts sleeping at the church, cleaning up their things at 4:30 a.m. They are eventually found out, but the pastor is helpful and finds some solutions for them. Things are looking up until Trish is part of a performance group that has a show at a soup kitchen... and Abby is in the audience. It gets splashed all over social media that Abby is homeless. How will her friends react?
Strengths: Like Nielsen's No Fixed Address, this gives a very good picture of what circumstances can drive families into homelessness, how it affects teens, and the ups and downs of it all. Abby's family is very fortunate in the people whom they meet and the help that they get. Abby and her family tries to stay positive. Abby's school experience is front and center, and her efforts at hiding her condition are well portrayed.
Weaknesses: Several f-bombs, the mother's affair, and the general level of introspection and thinking about college make this firmly YA. Also, I found it hard to believe that the mother would have been fired. We have had teachers in similar circumstances in my district, and they are still employed.
What I really think: Since this is in paperback, and has the more high school issues, I won't be purchasing, but it was really well done. I would buy it for a public or high school library.

I really enjoyed this book. Cinderella of the 21st century is a homeless teen, new in town, and living with her family in the parking lot of Walmart. The novel beautifully contrasted the differences between teens growing up in poverty and those growing up in suburban abundance. The wealthy kids in the novel blithely take their new cars, multiple prom dresses, and their phones for granted, while the main character watches in something between envy and amazement.

This would be a great choice for upper middle grade and high school English classes.

Roam presents a new perspective that I had not read previously and it was very enlightening. C.H. Armstrong presents an excellent contrast between rich and poor. There's no way a teen, especially a homeless teen, would move to a new town/school and immediately become friends with and begin dating some of the school's richest and most popular kids. Although improbable, Abby's easy entrance into this circle of friends serves to sharpen the comparison between the haves and the have nots.
However, my heart did not ache for Abby and her family as strongly as I expected given their circumstances. I think this is due to the excessive amount of tears Abby cried for herself. When a character is more stoic, it allows a reader to relate to their vulnerability in a different and more personal way.

This is a book that every high school student should read - a truly heartbreaking, gut-wrenching tale of hardship that no one, especially a teenager, should have to endure. This was so perfectly and beautifully written that I did not want to put it down. I adored Abby and felt every ounce of distraught and discomfort, shed every tear she did and experienced all the joy that came from the love and friendships around her. I understood her frustrations and wanted to vent them out on her mother just as she did. I truly did walk in her shoes as the words flowed seamlessly page by page. I was in awe of sweet and sincere Zach, who by the way, I know is too good to really exist but I hope that somewhere out there in our current social-media, cyberbullying, full of judgment world, there is a teenage boy as admirable as him.

Is the ending full of acceptance and non-judgment realistic considering our current social climate, especially within the young adult community? Probably not, but it’s what we all should hope and aspire for it to become. As a 27-year-old reading this, I’m 10 years too late to fully relate to the high school/social media/friendship side of this story, but it made me grateful for all that I currently have in my life and made me rethink and reevaluate some things as well - like when I go hop in my hot shower tonight in my heated home with a belly full of the hot dinner I just ate, I’ll count my blessings because not everyone can.

While reading this, it felt completely realistic and that is odd for me because that doesn’t happen often. This is a story about forgiveness, and survival. I think this a book that everyone should read. After I read this book, I sat back a thought, that its crazy that there are tons of homeless family’s in the world there needs to be something done about that because no one should live like that.

I loved that this book wasn’t the typical YA book about love or finding it. It was about life and how to deal with the hand that your dealt. Abby and her family don’t have the greatest situation, but they do make the best of it. I feel like Abby is a lot stronger then she was letting on. I mean with all the things that she had gone through, she was bullied, lost her friends, home, she had to move to a new state and on top of that her family are living in a van. That’s to much for anyone to handle.

Some parts of this story were truly heartbreaking and I think that’s what made me love this story more, because I was able to feel the pain that Abby was going through.

I do recommend this book for everyone to check it out, its one that you wont forget.

As someone who experienced homelessness as a child, I really appreciate a book that dived deep into this subject. ROAM shows how a family that no one would expect to be homeless loses everything with nuance and care. Themes of forgiveness and empathy abound in this touching story.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was your typical new girl in school story: Abby Lunde has just moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where she meets a group of friendly outcasts, the quarterback starts falling for her, and his ex-girlfriend has it out for her. The catch is that Abby is currently living in her mom's van.

This book didn't sugarcoat any of the hardships Abby and her family went through. On the other hand, it wasn't a depressing book. Abby doesn't want you to feel bad for her, and so you don't. The way homelessness is presented is definitely one of those "it could happen to you" scenarios where Abby was a fairly normal, middle-class girl until her parents both lost their jobs, but the book definitely took the effort to get you to feel for their struggles, and the struggles of the other homeless people in the story. It's a book about empathy, but it wasn't saturated in sadness. Homeless people are people like you or me, but they don't need to be ignored or coddled. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it!

This novel about a homeless high school student and her family is, unfortunately, badly uninformed, under-researched, oozing with unsubtle pro-Christian propaganda, and so full of brand names the author could have just put ads right into the pages. One of the most egregious thing the book does is paint the Salvation Army in a positive light, when the SA is a homophobic and abusive organization; having a single gay character in the book doesn't even begin to make up for the pro-SA message. From a literary POV, the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes, and the author's use and understanding of To Kill a Mockingbird is sophomoric and problematic.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC courtesy of Central Avenue Publishing through NetGalley. I am grateful for the opportunity to review an ARC for my readers, but this will not influence my final rating. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and based solely on the book. 

Armstrong didn't give me a second to re-think my decision to pick up this book from my TBR. Abby's journey starts right away, with her family pulling into a Wal-Mart parking lot in Rochester, Minnesota with only a beat-up van to call home. Abby and her mother are on the outs ever since her mom did "something" that apparently led them to all of this, her step-father Nick is working to keep tensions at bay, and six-year-old Amber just wants to know why there's no TV and cozy bed anymore. The pacing in Roam kept my interest piqued from page one to the end, introducing Abby's school life and new romance while exploring how she became homeless. 

Abby is your average teen girl. She loves English class, thinks science is cool but has absolutely no skills with the subject whatsoever, has an amazing talent for singing, and also might possibly have a huge crush on the school football quarterback. She just also happens to be homeless. Abby is far from happy about her situation (and she puts a lot of the blame on her mother). A lot of the book focuses on Abby's responsibilities as a homeless teen (watching over her sister, sacrificing social/academic time to support her family, etc.) and how she comes to terms with how she became homeless.

I found Abby's emotional maturity in the book was better suited to a character aged 15 to 16 than her actual seventeen years (and the same to all her peers in this book) but that's an opinion that could be left to debate. I would recommend this book more to youths in that age range though. Abby easily and quickly befriends people when arriving in Rochester. She meets a boy on her first day and the pair are dating a few days after. Abby lives in a van and cannot shower, but no one notices anything. She loses her job, but it does not negatively impact her life. The rapidity of the relationships, paired with the overall positive outlook on homelessness, is more suited to a younger audience *in my opinion* than older teens who can benefit from a deep look into the harsher conditions of homeless youth. This is not a bad thing in any way!!! Just my details on recommendation age. 

In fact, the positive spin to the story was enjoyable, particularly towards the end of the book. I do find that all the plot lines wrapped up very neatly, and certainly created an idealistic end situation for anyone living a life similar to Abby's. Abby found a super supportive group of friends that helped her embrace who she is, which is the biggest takeaway in this novel. 

A four crown rating for this book! I enjoyed this story immensely. I rated down a bit because the relationships were a bit too fast forming for my taste, but as I said, I think this would perform well within the younger teen audience. 

Review posting on blog (https://bookprincessreviews.wordpress.com/): Jan. 28
Review posting on goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2632007612)

In this book you're following 17-year-old Abby Lunde, who together with the rest of her family is made homeless through a series of misfortunes. This book balances her struggles with homelessness and her struggles being a normal teenager and blends these two aspects together which creates an important, very readable novel. There were some minor things that annoyed me about this book (mainly related to the complexity of certain characters and the pace of the romance) but nothing was big enough to stop me from liking this book. I recommend this book as I liked it, it deals with such an important topic and I feel like this book could easily be read and discussed at high schools.

Rating 4/5

What an outstanding performance by Armstrong! Following the lives of those living on the streets and how they struggle to regain their footings for a better life. This should be a star novel for any YA TBR shelf. You learn so many values from this story and how YOU can make a difference in the lives of others living very similarly to these characters.

After a series of unfortunate events, Abby and her family end up homeless in Rochester. Not only does she have to deal with the drama of starting a new school and making new friends, but at night her family struggles to stay warm in their van.

I've read a lot of novels recently, mostly middle grade, that deal candidly with homeless children. This one was different because of the acts of kindness Abby receives while on her journey. Now, I know that sounds kind of sappy, but there are a lot of caring, receptive people who cross her path, and the overall message is of empathy, honest communication, and helping people who are less fortunate. Again, this sounds pretty preachy, but it's not, I promise! I felt for Abby and her family throughout the whole novel, but the compassionate writing made my reading experience buoyant instead of cynical and depressed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I got this book from Netgalley.co.uk and it will be published on the 5th February 2019. You should get it.

It is a YA novel about a homeless teenager. I don't have the experience to say whether or not it's a realistic portrayal, but it felt like it could be. It managed to balance the realities of the situation without being overwhelmingly depressing, which obviously makes the book much more readable. It's certainly easy to imagine a book on this topic being very hard going. Which is not to say that this book isn't hard in places, it is, and it should be.

I'm constantly surprised and impressed by YA authors taking on issues like this in their novels, and then I'm surprised by the young adults themselves for reading them. It can only be a good thing. It is definitely a book to help you imagine someone else's world and how difficult other people's lives can be. And yet, it doesn't take much imagination to think about ways Abby and her family's situation could have been better or worse.

The characters are likeable, except where they're not meant to be - and then by and large they were sympathetically dealt with.

I really liked this book. I found it readable and just enough on the comfortable side to be appropriate for someone just starting to think about an issue like homelessness and what it really means, but without being too serious to maintain attention. Seriously think about getting it.

(Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in return for my honest opinion!)

Abby Lunde has a lot going on in her life: she's starting a new school, the queen bee hates her, and she's struggling to figure out how she'll pay for college. On top of that, her family has recently become homeless, and winter is right on the horizon. Her step dad says it's only temporary, but Abby can't seem to forgive her mother for putting them in this position in the first place. All she wants is to be a normal teenager, but instead she finds herself worrying about where her next meal will come from, where they're going to sleep at night, and how to stop the quarterback of the football team from finding out she lives in a van.

Real talk. I liked parts of this book. But I have to be honest, I did not find it super believable. Sure, the homelessness aspects rang true, and tugged at my heart. But her relationship with her mother and former friends (told mostly through flashbacks) just took away from the real heart of the book: Abby and her family and their predicament. I didn't find it super believable that <spoiler>her friends all turned her back on her because her mom had an affair. Or the *entire* school bullying her and calling her a slut because of something her mother had done.</spoiler> I understand world building, but I wanted more on Abby's current predicament, which is where the real meat of the story was.

Likewise, I found it hard to feel super sorry for her when <spoiler>she showed up at a new school and immediately had a bunch of great friends, a boyfriend.</spoiler> I wanted so much more about her hardships! Those scenes were so amazing to me. I wanted to know more about them.

All around, it's a good story, which teaches empathy and understanding. I wanted more emphasis on the hard times, and not a world of good happening to her at school. Especially when the world she lived in was so drastically different from those her friends were living.

That said, I think this is an important read that teaches empathy and understanding.

"Being homeless is the most helpless feeling in the world. One minute our lives were normal - we were completely in control of our destinies. The next minute circumstances were thrown at us that took everything away".

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it".

"I've learned that sometimes we have to roam in order to find the place that feels most like home".

Roam explores the issue of family homelessness; it follows the story of Abby Lunde, a 17 year old teenager who just happens to be homeless. Following a mistake made by her mother, Abby and her family are forced to move to Rochester and live out of her step-dad's van. As we watch their struggle of finding somewhere to sleep, eat, and live, we also follow Abby's struggle of trying to fit in at school.

The premise of this book was really intriguing to me, however I have to say that about the first half of the book I really struggled with it; I felt it didn't follow so much the struggle of how the family were coping with homelessness, but rather Abby's 'struggle' with fitting in at school. I put struggle in '' because there was no struggle for her; within a week she's got a boyfriend, three best friends, an arch enemy, and an audition for a soloist role in a school performance. It all felt a bit too much for me and as if this character was perfect with absolutely no flaws. That said, the second half did resonate much more with me and I did feel I connected more with Abby and her family; they appeared to be more fleshed out and I was able to empathise with the difficulties they were experiencing. I won't say much more so not to spoil the plot; I do feel this book is aimed at a much younger reading age than I am; probably 9-12 younger teen, rather than young adult, and feel if I was reading it at that age I probably wouldn't have noticed the above as much as I did now.

I definitely feel this story shows the realistic circumstances in which a couple of things go wrong and your whole life is thrown into turmoil; homelessness doesn't just happen to a stereotypical person, it can happen to everyone and this book really defines that. This is an important story that needs to be told for this generation.

Thank you NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for allowing me to read a copy of this book for my honest review.

An interesting topic of a teen drama whilst having family issues and being homeless added to the stress of schools and love.

A nice read that shows the cracking of adult and teen lives in a sympathetic way

It was a super unique story and plotline. It is about a teenage girl whose life is ripped away and she's forced out of her home with her struggling family. I don't find many books with that sort of story and I found it surprisingly refreshing. The book was written really well. My only complaint was that the new relationships seem to happen super fast and is sort of rushed... I don't think friendships/relationships happen that fast in real life. It was a great story and I definitely recommend it.

Abby's story is an important one to add to YA literature. Abby is a precocious teenager, one that I think other teens will relate to. She's smart, an avid reader, and has normal concerns about making friends at her new school and navigating a high school crush. All this is made more difficult by the fact that her family is homeless, and she's terrified that this secret will come out and ruin the new life she's working to build.

Despite the sad premise and a few gut-wrenching scenes, this is primarily a positive and uplifting story that is completely appropriate for a YA audience. It would make for good discussion in high schools or a youth group type setting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for a free advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book has left me feeling a lot of emotions. I understand the concept and the empathy and even the relevance of what so many families are struggling with right here in our nicest and most affluent of American neighborhoods. I respect all of those aspects of this book, but I was so angry at the parents and even some of the other adults bc no 6 year old deserves to sleep in a van in October! No child does and it happens everyday, but it was up to her parents to protect her even when their circumstances became beyond their control. Their children deserved better than they gave AFTER the fact and should have not been selfishly made to suffer when they could have spoken up and likely been taken in by a family at church or even into foster care as a very last resort. I understand wanting to keep your family together, but if you can’t keep your shit together, why watch your children needlessly suffer with you? All-in-all I enjoyed the book, but I still have mixed personal feelings a out the events—mainly because I know how realistic they actually are.