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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2018
A colorful, solid, deeply moving middle grade book that, with great sensitivity, deals with death. Posthumous is not a sad story about a girl losing her mother to cancer. It’s a story about a girl finding a purpose and finding herself through a set of meticulously laid out clues only a mother could leave before dying. Set in Paris and an American town that could be anywhere, Posthumous weaves a plot bristling with energy, humor and heart.
Like Aertker’s Crime Travelers series, Posthumous is a page turner. You might ask, how is a story about a girl living in Paris with her dad and terminally ill mom who writes children’s books a page turner? What propelled me from the first page to the last in a single day were Aertker’s carefully woven themes: loss, new beginnings, friendships forged, shifting parental dynamics and the deep desire of an adolescent girl trying with all her might to unlock (literally) her mother’s story.
What’s amazing about this book is, even though we learn on page two that Ellie’s mom dies, we have to keep reading to uncover the layers of significance this has for Ellie, and ultimately ourselves, as we become inextricably tied to this young protagonist’s quest for meaning and a way forward after losing her mom. This story had me getting off the city bus mid chapter, walking up the sidewalk, book out, reading, and yes, crying. I was hooked on this story.
In Posthumous, there is a mystery to solve, a departed mother’s final manuscript locked in a password protected computer and the password to find in a heap of clues. Add a cast of vivid, international characters, Paris’s vibrant heartbeat and a collection of American middle schoolers trying to figure out “the new American girl from Paris” and you’re in for an enjoyable read. Cap it off with an ending you would never predict and you have a winning book that leaves you thinking about these finely crafted characters, the meaning of motherhood and its impact on our children, and what true friendships really mean.
KC NYC
Like Aertker’s Crime Travelers series, Posthumous is a page turner. You might ask, how is a story about a girl living in Paris with her dad and terminally ill mom who writes children’s books a page turner? What propelled me from the first page to the last in a single day were Aertker’s carefully woven themes: loss, new beginnings, friendships forged, shifting parental dynamics and the deep desire of an adolescent girl trying with all her might to unlock (literally) her mother’s story.
What’s amazing about this book is, even though we learn on page two that Ellie’s mom dies, we have to keep reading to uncover the layers of significance this has for Ellie, and ultimately ourselves, as we become inextricably tied to this young protagonist’s quest for meaning and a way forward after losing her mom. This story had me getting off the city bus mid chapter, walking up the sidewalk, book out, reading, and yes, crying. I was hooked on this story.
In Posthumous, there is a mystery to solve, a departed mother’s final manuscript locked in a password protected computer and the password to find in a heap of clues. Add a cast of vivid, international characters, Paris’s vibrant heartbeat and a collection of American middle schoolers trying to figure out “the new American girl from Paris” and you’re in for an enjoyable read. Cap it off with an ending you would never predict and you have a winning book that leaves you thinking about these finely crafted characters, the meaning of motherhood and its impact on our children, and what true friendships really mean.
KC NYC
