"I didn't believe Mom could be gone completely when there was so much of her left everywhere. There was her voice in the parrot, her sleepwalking in Lizzie, and now Dad asked me questions like if I was wearing sunscreen of if I'd had enough to eat. Mom showed up in parts of me too: I had her scientific mind, and now, without her, I was Boomer's favorite person in the family.
There was a sign over the church door that said: Jesus Is in Us All. Maybe we do breathe in a dead person's leftover spirit, like Soda had said. That's why there are parts of Mom still in the house, and parts of her in the river, parts left in Lizzie and in me. Maybe a spirit evaporates like vapor off of the bag of frozen peas you steam in the microwave; the droplets go everywhere, settle wherever they land."


A heartbreaking and honest look into the world of Elvis Babbitt, an 11-year-old girl whose mother drowned while sleepwalking, Rabbit Cake is one of the only books to make me laugh out loud. Elvis is an inquisitive, precocious, and candid narrator and through her perspective, we observe her family's and her own journey through the grief process. Despite being about grief and death, the overall mood of this book was hopeful. The one year anniversary of my grandfather's death being yesterday, my reading of this book could not have been more perfectly timed. It served as a poignant reminder that grief is not a straight pathway that everyone experiences in the same way. Additionally, it gave me a way to laugh at my own family dynamics, something that isn't always easy to do. I'd recommend this book to anyone - Annie Hartnett's writing flows easily and her message is universal. Topped off with a cast of imperfect characters that are easy to love, Rabbit Cake is a novel I won't soon forget.