This book was a sweet, poignant story dealing with coping, sadness, and loss. I think that it delicately handled how a person who lost a parent might have been feeling without making those feeling seem wrong or like they just needed to get over it to be happy. At no point in the story did anyone tell Willa that she shouldn't feel sad anymore; instead, they helped her overcome the sadness so that it didn't feel so unbearable. The interactions between Willa and her family and friends felt genuine and enjoyable to read. Willa herself never felt whiny or overbearing, but felt like someone I could easily connect to. This is a great story to normalize and humanize sadness and feeling overwhelmed by negative things, but also allowed for the reader to experience humor, joy, and the sense of overcoming something difficult. It was a truly enjoyable read

Willa's mother passed away a month ago and her dad has taken her whale watching. Willa connects with a whale while out on the ocean. This trip also allows her to reconnect with her friend Marco and as their friendship grows, they find that they needed each other to each heal their own demons.

This book is perfect for middle grade readers and deals poignantly with grief and loss.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

So, Willa meets a whale, while whale watching, and find she can talk to it when she goes down to the beach. Her mother, who was a marine biologist died recently, and she is now living with her father and his new family, and there is nothing of her old life, except the house she grew up in, which is now filled with people she doesn't know.

So, yes, it is hard, and yes, she has some good talks with her whale, Meg. They talk about life, and death, and friendships, and this seems to help her with healing, at least a little.

Beautifully written it includes the story, which happened last year, as told by Meg, of a mother whale who gave birth to a baby that died, but that she kept afloat, as they migrated up the coast, for nearly two weeks. As Meg explains "She wasn't ready to let go."

There is lots of sadness in this book, but, as is pointed out, that's ok. You can be sad about losing your mother, and you don't have to stop just because everyone else has stopped.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I received this ARC from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a truly lovely story about dealing with loss and grief. It starts one month after the death of Willa's mother. Following a divorce, Willa moved with her mother to Japan where she worked as a marine biologist. Upon her death, Willa returns to her previous home on an island in the Pacific Northwest where her dad now lives with a new wife and four noisy children.

Willa's dad takes her on a whale watch on the one month anniversary of her mother's death. It is there that she has a transformative experience with a whale that becomes central to dealing with her overwhelming grief. Willa's friend Marco is happy enough to resume their friendship, but he is struggling with his own demons. Though he is exactly the friend Willa needs, he needs her just as much.

I can't say enough about this one. I loved it and know many middle grade readers will too.

Willa and the Whale, by Chad Morris, is a beautiful story about loss and grief.

In the story, Willa and the Whale, you meet a young girl named Willa. Willa has been living in Japan while her mother who was a marine biologist. After her mother's untimely death, Willa's life is uprooted. She has to now go live with her father and his new family in America.

While dealing with the loss of her mother, Willa's father takes her whale watching. It is during this trip that Willa's life is transformed. She meets a whale named Meg, and the two of them help each other overcome the grief of their lives.

I thought Willa and the Whale did a beautiful job in dealing with a very sensitive manner. Willa's feelings of grief were heard and supported. She took the steps she needed to move on with the help from her father, Meg, and a new friend she meets.

As a fan of middle grade books, and anything to do with whales in general, I have to admit that when I requested Willa and the Whale to read it was purely a cover-love request, but I'm pleased to say that this was a surprisingly poignant read.

Thirteen-year old Willa has spent the last few years living with her marine biologist mother in Japan, but when her mother dies unexpectedly, she returns to the United States to live with her father and step-family in her old hometown. Willa, like her mother, has a passion for marine life, and on a whale-watching trip, meets Meg, a humpback whale who can inexplicably communicate with her. In Meg, Willa finds a confidant, as well as a source of wisdom and comfort as she deals with the deep loss she feels, but doesn't know how to cope with.

Willa and the Whale is unexpectedly powerful in the whale it depicts a young teen dealing with her grief. Feeling isolated from the new family she doesn't know yet, Willa struggles to connect and communicate with everyone, including her dad. She clings to things she knows - an old friend, Marc, and her passion for marine biology and learning. At times, this frustrates her as she finds herself in competition for top of her class with another girl, fighting for a position on the local swim team and trying to manage her feelings on her own.

While the magical realism element of the whale being able to communicate with Willa over large distances is a little out there, as we begin to get to know Willa it becomes just part of the story and the tales that Meg shares with Willa help to ease some of the grief the young teen feels and to put everything into perspective.

It was nice to see Willa's growth over the course of the novel, as she moves from seeing her new family as being separate from her, to being a group of people she might like to get to know better. It takes a tragic event in the last third of the book to get her to this point, but from that, she begins to realise that it's okay to need other people and to lean on them for support.

This will be a very important book for middle graders who struggle with grief and loss.

This is a awesome book as all of the Morris/Brown books. It is a great book for helping to cope with loss and will be a nice additions to our collection.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I was not able to get into this due to the subject matter being a bit too dark and sad for me at the time. That being said, we purchased copies and this book seems well-loved by many patrons.