Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Love the extended metaphor about grief and how the main character comes to understand herself throughout the story. There are just enough fun and funny moments throughout to balance the more serious subject matter. A useful story to show how to build a central metaphor in fiction pieces for young writers.

I had to DNF this title about 50% in. The diary storytelling from the main character was hard for me to connect with, and I found myself skimming rather than engaging with the story. I tried so hard to wait until the other character featured on the cover showed up, but ultimately lost patience.

Fans of flawed main characters, grief storylines, diary-style writing, and learning about the difference between living in the UK and US might enjoy this title more than I did.

In Glitter Gets Everywhere is a middle-grade that follows Kitty whose mother has passed away and so much has changed in her life over the last few months. When her family moves from London to New York City, leaving behind her friends, grandmother, and memories that help keep her mother alive; she doesn't want to go. New York is bright and different than what Kitty has grown up to love. She tries to adjust to her new school, new life in New York, we become friends with a blue-haired boy who bonds with her other things.
Kitty is a great led character that will make you laugh, cry and learn to enjoy the little things. I enjoyed Kitty's self-discovery and growth as a character. I have read a few middle-grades where the characters don't grow or hardly grow but Kitty is a character who is fully flushed out. She learns to make friends in a new place. Kitty's family is all good rounds but her grandmother stands out, she is where Kitty gets her charm from.
The writing style is seamless, easy to get lost in. I also liked how a real-life culture is woven through this book. The author's ability to write powerful grift movements, heartfelt family moments, new friendships all show off Clark's skills. I liked that there were no over-the-top drama scenes. This book felt normal and real. There is the topic of therapist and I love how it is handle in this book, it's done in a positive way.
This book deals with grief, starting over, and learning to enjoy new places. This is a heartfelt, debut novel, about family, friends, and the journey of new starts.

Unique characters and situation, this story follows a young girl who is dealing with grief and healing after her mother’s death.
I enjoyed this book and it’s characters the more I kept reading.

In the story, Glitter Gets Everywhere, Kitty is dealing with a tragic death. of her mother. Her loss of her mother was quick and sudden. The lung cancer that they found took her quickly. Kitty and her family barely had time to cope with their mother's illness before she was taken away forever.

The grief in this story is just heartwrenching. Your heart will ache with Kitty as she experiences the funeral, and everything that comes after losing a loved one. You will feel Kitty's struggle with moving on as it seems her whole world around her has all found ways to live without her mom.

Change comes for Kitty at a welcome time. Her father accepts a project in New York, so her family moves there while he completes his work. The new scene gives Kitty a chance to explore a new world all while she learns to live again.

Thank yo to the publisher for the e-ARC of this novel.

By the end of the second chapter, my heard already ached. Kitty's grief is so palpable that the reader is immediately drawn in. I loved Kitty as a character, and her family and friends were all lovingly woven into the story (how can you not root for her neighbor on the Great British Baking Show?!). I think this is a great book for most readers, but a phenomenal one for students dealing with grief.

Kitty was eleven when the bottom fell out of her world. Her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, despite never having been a smoker. Her mother didn’t respond to the treatment, and her cancer got worse. And then her mother died, and it was like the color drained from her world.

Color is big for Kitty. Her mother’s best friend Kate is an interior designer there in London, and she’s the one who first introduced Kitty to the Farrow & Ball paint palette. Ever since, Kitty has been obsessed with the paint colors, noting the shades of everything around her. She knows the names, the colors, and often the short blurb the company uses to describe the color. She hopes one day to create her own paint colors for them and create those names herself.

But for now, there are no colors. There is only sadness. Because grief, like glitter, gets everywhere, and there’s nothing you can do to clean it all up.

But the weeks go by. Kitty has to go back to school. Her older sister Imogen goes back to bring too cool to hang out with Kitty. Their father goes back to work. Her Gran, her mother’s mother, goes back to raising money to the hospice that helped Kitty’s mom. And their next-door neighbor just keeps on baking, because she’s won a spot on The Great British Bake-Off and needs to practice.

Then her father makes an announcement: they’re going to New York City for a few months, for a work project of his. Imogen is thrilled at the idea of going to New York, but Kitty refuses to go. She doesn’t want to leave her friends, she doesn’t want to leave her school, and she doesn’t want to leave home. But her Gran and Kate remind Kitty that her mother had visited New York City when she was younger and had loved it. She’d have wanted Kitty to go. So Kitty goes.

New York is filled with new experiences—seeing the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, eating a hot dog from a street vendor, going to a school with boys, and experiencing an American Thanksgiving. And while Kitty is still grieving, she does see that she can make new memories, meet new friends, and maybe even create her very first paint color.

Glitter Gets Everywhere is a lovely story of healing, of grieving, of coming together with those you care about, and of making new memories despite having lived through terrible pain. Yvette Clark’s debut middle grade novel is a warm and inviting invitation to this lovely family, and while their tragedy and loss is incredibly real, it’s balanced by the love of family and friends and the words of Kitty and Imogen’s mother in the letters she left for her daughters.

I loved Glitter Gets Everywhere. I thought Kitty’s obsession with the paint colors was charming, and her family and friends were adorable. As a big fan of The Great British Bake off, it made me so happy that it made its way into this story. And while not every tween has experienced the loss of a parent, I think most kids know some kind of loss in their lives, so they can still find some resonance with Kitty’s story. It’s charming, it’s uplifting, and it’s fun, and I think kids will like it too.

Egalleys for Glitter Gets Everywhere were provided by HarperCollins Children’s Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.

When I agreed to review this book, I had no idea what I’d be going through when it came out. Reading a book centered around grief while grieving has been an interesting journey. A lot of things Kitty experienced really resonated with me. I loved the way the story shows different characters responding to grief in different ways, too. It’s really Kitty’s story, but around the edges of her own experience, we get to see other people wrestling with grief in their own ways.

This book is packed with a fantastic cast of characters. There’s Kitty’s older and often antagonistic sister Imogen, who knows all the things the cool kids know. There’s Kitty’s dad, treading water, trying to keep the family afloat and both be available to his girls but also shelter them from some of his own grief and fears about the future. So relatable. I loved Kitty’s spunky grandmother, with her strong opinions and fierce insights. And the wacky Mrs. Allison, the British baking star with her lovable dog, mothering everyone and fussing over them all with cookies and cakes. Something about all those people in a room together made those scenes really sparkle.

Kitty’s grief is real and raw and very relatable. I found myself nodding along to some of her observations and taking comfort in her refuge of colors. I loved the relationship between her and Imogen, with its sparks of tension and tenderness underneath. GLITTER GETS EVERYWHERE is a therapy-positive story, but it’s also real about some of the struggles of therapy. Sometimes things don’t make sense the first time you hear them. Sometimes things a therapist says don’t connect with you at the time or ever. But other times, it provides a vehicle for you to say things you didn’t know you needed to say or to hear healthy things you didn’t know would challenge what you believe.

All in all, I’m so happy I read this book. I love its tenderness and sadness and its surprising joy. I think readers who enjoyed CHIRP by Kate Messner or CATERPILLAR SUMMER by Gillian McDunn will love this book.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.

This was one of those stories I slowed down towards the end, because I didn't want it to finish. I loved Kitty and her family and friends, as well as the dual continent setting. Kitty is a very brave girl, and the author did such a wonderful job writing Kitty's experiences as she navigates the process of grief. It's an authentic-feeling story, that doesn't wrap up neatly in ribbons and bows, but it does end with hope and optimism for the future, which felt exactly right.

Glitter Gets Everywhere follows Kitty, a 10-year-old girl living in London, shortly after the death of her mom from lung cancer. Her dad is offered a short term job in New York City, so the family (Kitty, her dad, her older sister Imogen) uproots and moves across the pond.

The thing I most appreciated about this book was its openness and honesty about therapy and grief. Kitty sees a therapist as does her new friend Henry, and it is just a normal part of their lives. I wish more books discussed mental health and treatment among tween and teen readers.

The family dynamics in this story also felt very realistic and not fake or over-dramatized.

E ARC provided by Netgalley

Kitty Wentworth's mother has died after a lengthy bout with lung cancer, even though she didn't smoke. Her father and grandmother as very supportive, and have her in therapy with a colleague of her mother's, so she is able to articulate things that are bothering her. Her older sister Imogen is doing a bit better than Kitty, since she has a boyfriend and more outside interests, but Cleo the cat, a friend of her mother's, Kate, and neighbor Mrs. Allison, who is a contestant on The Great British Bake Off, as well as Sam, the therapist, are all helping. When her father has an opportunity to work on a long term project in New York City, however, Kitty is aghast that she will have to leave London. There isn't much of a choice, but she settles in to her new school fairly well and makes friends with Henry, whose father is a famous actor. There grandmother and Mrs. Allison visit, and it's not long before it's time to head home to England. When her father has an opportunity to spend several years living in New York, Kitty thinks that there might be some advantages to having two places she can call home.
Strengths: It was good to see not only that Kitty was in therapy, but to see some of the discussions that she has with both Sam and her new therapist in New York. Middle grade authors love to kill off parents, but usually like to have the remaining parent lapse into LIMPS (Literary MiddleGrade Ineffectual Parenting Syndrome). I loved the grandmother and Mrs. Allison, and it made me think that there aren't enough happy, helpful adult characters in books as there should be! The move from England to New York is fairly interesting, Kitty's obsession with color is one that I share (anyone else just irked at the Pantone 2021 colors?), and Kitty settles into her new school (where she can wear tennis shoes!) well. I especially liked the analogy whence comes the title- grief is like glitter. Even though you think you clean it up, you can never get all of it, and it resurfaces at odd moments.
Weaknesses: This got off to a slow start, and the move didn't happen until well into the book.
What I really think: There are so many books about parents dying, and my students have little interest in the topic. This one is better done, and does involve London, so I may purchase.

What a wonderful debut! I love how Yvette Clark introduced Kitty and her story on their home turf in London, where we got to know all the fully-realized characters who are dear to her before she moved with her widowed father and everything-seems-perfect-for-her sister to New York -- perfect except for the shadow of their mom's death. Kitty's a realistic and endearing narrator wrestling with her grief but with ample moments of warmth and humor to make this a page-turner. I think a whole range of kids will enjoy this book, particularly upper middle grade readers who will see their middle school experiences reflected in the story, as well as the push toward independence happening at that age while still rooted in family. The character descriptions, use of color, cultural references and language all drew me in -- I highly recommend this book!

With thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for an early copy in return for an honest review.

As someone who really likes books with a strong sense of setting, I appreciated how well I felt transported to NYC and London through the pages of the story. I also have several students who will appreciate the baking aspect with the subplot about The Great British Bake Off.

As we follow Kitty's family from London to New York we get a firsthand look at the grief their family is experiencing and how they are handling this grief. I though the analogy of grief to glitter was excellent and really made a lot of sense. I love the use of Farrow & Ball colors in the book and would highly recommend bookmarking their site while you read so you can take a peek at the colors referenced during the story.

Lovely, compelling story about family, grief and the small moments that get us through. Also a love letter to NYC and London, two fabulous cities. As a home baker, I also adored the subplot involving a neighbor competing on British Bake Off.

Not at all the book I expected, since I was hoping the glitter indicated a queer narrative. I guess that's what I get for choosing a book by its cover. Still, a sweet story following the grief and growth of a tween. I did feel that the end was a bit random and forced, but it wasn't bad, just unexpected.

Advance reading copy provided by Netgalley.

This review is on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3728902350