cinderella story; tokyo

At age sixteen, Elle Zoellner is just a young adult, but the adults in her life want her to be understanding of their addictions and their shortcomings when all she wants is to be understood.  When her mother is consumed by the Beast of addiction to prescription drugs and gets sentenced to Jessup Correctional Institute in Maryland, Elle—whose absent father has only been sarcastically called Mr. Tokyo—ends up in the foster care system where she encounters lice, bedbugs, and overlords who restrict her showers to one per week.  Pairing those hygiene challenges with her initials and her mixed-race status makes Elle an EZ target forRead More →