We have here what's becoming a standard set-up in a teen novel - a girl who has to go live with her dad and his other family. There is, of course, resentment and difficult adjustment on both sides as she tries to fit into their world. It also falls victim to the tendency of the "new kid" narrative, where our fish out of water shows these people why their view of things is wrong. She is largely the wronged party and doesn't take much responsibility for things going wrong. It has some complexity but ultimately doesn't have much staying power.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

"No One Is Alone" by Rachel Vincent is a captivating and emotionally charged novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Vincent has a remarkable ability to create complex characters that you can't help but root for, and this book is no exception.

The story follows the journey of a young girl named Delaney who discovers that she has the power to communicate with the dead. As she tries to navigate her new abilities and uncover the truth about her past, she meets a group of teens who also possess supernatural powers. Together, they must band together to fight against an evil organization that seeks to exploit their powers for their own gain.

Overall, "No One Is Alone" is a must-read for fans of the paranormal and YA genres. Vincent's masterful storytelling and compelling characters make this novel an absolute joy to read. Highly recommended!

Michaela’s mom dies unexpectedly and she’s forced to live with her dad’s secret “real” family who she never knew about. She tries out for the school musical, meets a cute boy, and learns to live in her new family with her new siblings.

I really loved this book. Michaela was a strong protagonist- she stood up for herself but also tried to bond with her new half-siblings in an impossible situation.

I find Rachel Vincent vastly underrated and I wonder if that has to do with the fact that a large proportion of YA readers are actually adults or what, but I have never had better success with recommending an author to teens than with Rachel Vincent. No One Is Alone deals with being a child of divorce, the meaning of family, sense of self, and more!

No One is Alone deals with sorrow and "life moving on" without skipping over all the heartbreaking details that are flung at grieving survivors after losing a loved one. This story is about Michaela dealing with her loss in the midst of the fast-flowing waters of life. She is forced to change almost every familiar comfort of her existence and is expected to do so with grace and thankfulness. Vincent does an amazing job with this story that helps build empathy and forces a self-check on our own perspectives. Highly recommended for YA collections.

Rachel Vincent's No One Is Alone shines the spotlight on 16-year old Michaela Rutherford. Michaela was cruising along, enjoying her life with her single mother (a neonatal nurse), a father that is a pop-up parent who mostly shows up around holidays and birthdays. She's lucky enough that her alleged father was good enough to pay child support so that Michaela and her mother can worry about other things instead of how they are going to pay the bills.

Let's not sweep away the fact that Michaela is the result of a illicit affair between a married man, and her own mother who, no offense, should have known better than to trust the word of a married man. So, after her mother dies unexpectedly and horribly, Michaela's world upends in the worst ways possible. She has to leave all her friends behind, she has to leave her home behind, and everything she and her mother made together now has to be boxed up, sold, or donated.

She learns quickly that not only does she have to go live with her father, Dr. Bosch who already has a family of his own. She now has two brothers (17) Gabriel, (12) Cody, and an older sister by months, Emery who hates the fact that she has to share a room with a girl who is the result of an illicit affair. It's not easy when she sharing a room with a sister she didn't know she had who happens to only be a few months older than her. Luckily, Gabe isn't so bad, and how can you not love Cody who is a gamer?

The title of the book is actually from a song by Stephen Sondheim from the musical Into the Woods which is performed towards the end of Act II as the piece's penultimate number. Why does this matter you ask? Because when Michaela arrives at her new school, she sees a poster for a play that her mother loved called Into the Woods. Her favorite song was No One Is Alone. And, with no hopes of getting a call back, Michaela picks up a script and starts singing to her mother who she misses terribly.

I gave Michaela a whole lot of room for anger, and sadness, and lashing out at people because of her mother's untimely and unnecessary death. I wish that she had reached out and asked for help or had time to properly grieve. There is a lot of drama from family dynamics to school that she has to deal with. Not everyone at her school has her best interest at heart and it’s easy to lose ourselves when grief is involved. Michaela also is her own enemy at times. When things get bad, she pulls out the dead mother card. When Emery warns her about a boy, she ignores the warning.

I wasn't expecting a large chunk of this book to be about Into the Woods, especially since Michaela had zero experience in the theater. There are some heart warming scenes between Michaela and the grandmother who has dementia. The whole family tried to distance themselves from the inevitable, while Michaela actually spent time with her and often encouraged others to make time which broke ice with her stepmother.

The family dynamic is interesting, the problems the family faces are real, and each member is well-defined and relatable. I just wish that Michaela had looked some where else instead of the boy her sister broke up with recently.

This book is about losing everything and finding it again as something different.
This will take readers on a roller coaster of highs and lows

What an interesting concept for a YA book. I love Vincent's writing and couldn't put it down. This one will resonate with kids and adults.

A book dealing with the sensitive aspects of death,grief and family changes this was very well written. Michaelas mother dies suddenly and she is thrust into living with her dad, who she had no idea had a whole other family. As she deals with the dynamics of this and getting tom] know each other and the family she has moved in with, we are taken through her life and many emotions. Overall it was a nice coming into your own book that blended family teens and teens dealing with grief may really relate to.

I feel like my thoughts on this one are complicated. First, it’s the second book in a row where I didn’t really connect with the main character the way I wanted to. Which is unusual for me. It makes me wonder if I’m just… grouchy or something? So factor that possibility into this review.

I thought the beginning of the book was great. It starts off when Michaela learns her mom died, and right away, she’s thrown into a tailspin. She feels so many things. So many things change faster than she can catch her breath. It drew me in, hooked me into the story.

I loved Gabe and Cody, Michaela’s brothers immediately. Cody is so sweet and so smart. Gabe has this easygoing, funny exterior but it feels like there’s more happening underneath that cheery surface. I wanted to get to know them more. Another character I really liked is Grammie, Michaela’s step-grandmother, who lives with the family and is terminally ill. I liked the way the relationship between them helped Michaela find her place within the family and even process some of her grief. Cynthia, Michaela’s stepmom also won me over pretty quickly. She’s got her issues, but she’s so clearly trying to love and care for all the people around her the best she can.

I found it harder to connect with Michaela. She’s stubborn, which is okay. I think her character was paced really well and the way her stubbornness impacted her other relationships made a lot of sense. She also grew a lot as a result of that stubbornness. And sometimes it led her to say things that needed to be said even though they were hard things to say.

You know that feeling when you’re in the car with someone and they take too long to start braking the car, so you feel your foot trying to stomp an imaginary brake pedal? I think had the reading experience of that feeling in this book. Which I think is maybe evidence that the author did a really good job with making Michaela a flawed, consistent character. And she does grow a lot.

Aside from all of that, let me say that Michaela joins a theater production of Into the Woods, so a lot of the story centers around that and around her performing with her brother’s garage band. I loved both those elements, but the cover copy mentions neither of them. But they’re both worth knowing about.

All in all, I feel like what I’m trying to say is that I think NO ON IS ALONE is a really well-written book. I just didn’t connect with it the way I’d hoped to. I think fans of WHERE STARS STILL SHINE by Trish Doller will like this one.

A read this author last year and it was a YA Fantasy. It was good but not a favorite and was curious how her contemporary would be. It definitely was a lot better and had me wanting to continue reading into the night. It was hard to put down.

The book is told from one point-of-view and it comes from Michaela. She is going through a lot right from the beginning when her mom suddenly dies from an accident. To make matters worse, she didn’t know her dad had another family with other kids. Talk about turning your world upside down! Because of all this, Michaela has a lot to navigate through and it isn’t always easy.

I may not have gone through anything Michaela has besides grief. It’s one of the worst things to go through. Even though that was the only thing we had in common I didn’t have a hard time connecting with her. You could feel her pain through the pages and you just want to give her a big hug.

The other characters are pretty memorable as well, especially the grandma. I had to deal with mine having dementia and it’s hard to watch them forget who you are. I understand why Emery distanced herself from it all. The siblings don’t always get along together but it’s easy to understand why they would have an issue with the circumstance of finding out you have another sibling. Sometimes I would get just as upset as Michaela at her stepmother but then I found myself seeing her point-of-view and it’s just a crappy situation for everyone involved. Each person really tried their best.

There is a lot of drama from family dynamics to school. Not everyone at her school has her best interest at heart and it’s easy to lose ourselves when grief is involved. The book does a good job of showing how each person deals with it differently as well as the stress of life.

Romance does have a very small part and although it has its hurdles for Michaela, she at least gets a happier ending.

Overall, this was a heartbreaking read but one that I really liked.

Michaela is a junior in high school, living what she thinks is a typical life with her single mom. She occasionally sees her dad, who lives across town, on holidays and her birthday, but does not have much of a relationship with him. When her mom is suddenly and tragically killed, Michaela is forced to go live with her father -- and the family she had no idea that he had. It turns out his father had an affair with his mother, and he has a wife and three kids that come as a complete surprise to Michaela. The family includes Michaela's half-sister, Emery, who is almost exactly her age, who is not excited to share a room with Michaela or to have to explain to her friends at school who Michaela is.

As Michaela struggles to fit into her home and new school, she finds a new community with the school's musical -- but one that also includes Emery and Emery's ex-boyfriend, who now seems interested in Michaela. Will Michaela, reeling from the loss of her mom, ever be able to feel comfortable in a new world where those who should be closest to her seem determined to make her feel unwelcome?

Through an interesting premise, the author offers a perceptive exploration of family, the challenges adolescence and grief.

Highly recommended!

Michaela has a good life. She has a best friend she can tell anything and a single mother who she has a good relationship with. She doesn’t see her dad very often, though. He lives a few towns away and only comes around near holidays and on her birthday. That all changes when her mother is hit by a car and dies. She learns she must move in with her dad … and his other family. Turns out he wasn’t a confirmed bachelor who didn’t want a family. He already had a family and her mom was the other woman. His wife knew about Michaela, but her two brothers and her sister just found out, hours before she was brought over to live with them. Will this new family ever become hers?

No One Is Alone is a stand-alone realistic fiction story that grabbed my attention at the beginning and kept me reading until the end. Vincent created characters that were easy to understand and empathize with. I lost my father when I was young, but I didn’t learn about another family that needed to be understood while also grieving. This could have happened to me (or anyone else) and that realization made the book that much more compelling. I recommend No One Is Alone to everyone who enjoys a good read.

If Michaela had only known that that was the last time she would see her mother alive, she would tell her how much she loved her. Instead, she finds herself suddenly without a mother and forced to leave her school, her town, and her home to live with her father. And six hours after the death of her mother, she finds herself in her father’s home, with the family she never knew he had.

Rachel Vincent has written a great coming of age story focusing on the importance of communication and how not communicating can shatter the carefully constructed lives we build.

Disclaimer: An advance copy was provided by Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books.

Micheala's life is turned upside down when her mother is killed and she is forced to move in with her father's family - the one she didn't know existed. Now she has 2 brothers and a sister she has never met. She feels like an outsider in her new home and the only thing that is making it bearable is the school's musical production of Into the Woods - her mother's favourite. But Micheala's involvement in the play puts her at odds with her new sister - especially when her sister's ex turns his attention towards Micheala. Micheala's going to have to decide where she stands in all this chaos and where she wants to be when she makes it out of the woods.

This story was heart-wrenching and beautiful. Micheala's loss is blended through the story and effects how she deals with all the new people in her life. I just wanted to give her a hug through most of the story.

I was initially drawn to this book because of its focus on family, and was happily surprised that there was a high school theatre subplot. I was impressed with how well-written the details of this story were, especially around the main character's grief.

However, I struggled to understand the main character's choices, especially when it came to her interactions with other characters and the theatre subplot, and that led to me not really rooting for her.

I'm interested to see what else Rachel Vincent writes!

Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC!

I love Rachel Vincent, and she can easily allow me to be sucked into this world and become so invested in characters after only a few chapters of being introduced. This was a tough plot. Finding out your father had an affair, and you're a product of said affair after your own mother dies is a lot for a teen. Michaela is tossed into a really terrible situation that she didn't ask for and has to navigate this new life. It's emotional, relatable, and just really good.

#NoOneIsAlone #NetGalley
Rachel Vincent is one of the few authors that I will request without even caring what her book is about. She can weave a story like no one else. I read all her books because her characters are genuine and realistic people. I loved this story, but the characters are wonderful!

Rachel Vincent never disappoints! There were definitely a lot of circumstances that happened very quickly, but it was a journey of healing and acceptance with a hearty helping of teenage angst.

I appreciate how she chose to handle the topics that came up and I fully believe that many readers can enjoy this work.