I really loved this story. I loved the baseball! We have a minor league team where I live and I love going to the games. I could practically taste the hot dogs and smell the popcorn. I loved Quinnen, her family and her friends. I loved learning about the homestays (something I was not familiar with before) and I loved seeing Quinnen's growth through the story. The pacing in this novel is perfect. Everything is revealed in a natural developmental arc, exactly when it should be, and not before. There is not a single stereotypical character, either; each one is layered and nuanced, and their believable, complex humanity surprises us right along with Quinnen. With humor and insight, the author brings it all home. THE DISTANCE TO HOME is the beautifully written, bittersweet, deeply resonant story of a girl, Quinnen, who has lost her sister Haley. Quinnen seems to have also lost her relationship with everything else that mattered most in her life: Her mom. Her dad. Baseball. It’s at this point Hayley goes completely out of character and starts acting, to quote Quinnen, like one of the mean girls on an MTV show.

Book clubs: I had a nice little walk down memory lane when they featured Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret— particularly when I realized that I read it around Quinnen’s age. I was on the edge of my seat with this book, reading as fast as I could to discover how everything turned out.

This summer, everything is different. Haley’s death, at the end of last summer, has left Quinnen and her parents reeling. The route finder service provides maps and driving directions for the UK, Europe and beyond, as well as giving you the opportunity to find hotels wherever you're going in the UK. You can also generate directions that are fully integrated with customisable real-time traffic updates and our fuel cost calculator using the advanced options in the main Route Planner section. The functionality provides specific city driving maps for London and European route directions for longer trips abroad.

Last summer, Quinnen was the star pitcher of her baseball team, the Panthers. They’re headed for the championship, and her loudest supporter at every game was her best friend and older sister, Haley. The RAC is always looking for new ways to help you plan your journey. Our new maps feature adds to the functionality of the route planner to help find hotels, garages and car dealerships by location.The RAC map also enables you to display weather information for the UK so you can plan your journey based on the driving conditions.There's a lot to admire in this story, which manages to capture the family's grief without ever becoming maudlin. I loved how Quinnan's grief morphed — sometimes she was angry, sometimes she was sad, sometimes she was just lost. I also really, really liked how well-developed and well-drawn all the characters were, especially the adult characters, complete with imperfections and their own issues.