Closer to 2.5 stars, but rounded up.

Honestly, this was just a compilation of tropes, and it would work better as a middle grade rather than YA novel (with Dess and Hope in middle school rather than high school): the morality was simplified, the outcomes predictable, the characters archetypical. Seriously though, Dess is your typical hardened delinquent-ish foster kid who only cares about her birth family; Hope is more relatable, but still a pretty typical tryhard good girl; their conflict boils down pretty easily to superificial petty dislike based on projections of their own resentments and insecurities (though Hope gets points for trying to be nice). I’m not sure why Dess’s chapters were told in first person and Hope’s in third; it seems to imply that Dess is the “real” main character, but that’s not what alternating-POV usually conveys.

It’s pretty much the definition of a feel-good novel, about different types of family, tasteful diversity (with mild incidents of racism to highlight the wholesome status quo, though it’s directly addressed at most once). So I guess it’s heartwarming, but not in the way that leaves an impression.