Love.

Book: Annabel
Author: Kathleen Winter
Method: gift (mum and dad)

My mum has this impeccable knack of picking books based on reviews and gut feelings. Both she and my father seem to have this talent. Maybe it comes from years of collecting, or maybe it's some 6th sense. This was a birthday present from the two of them, but I didn't get to read it right after my birthday because it is impossible to leave my parents house with just one book.
This book was a really beautiful story about the simplicity and the complications of love between a child and a parent, especially a child who is different. It is one of those novels that manages to deal with a very difficult and confusing subject in a way that makes the story both believable and moving.
The couple in the novel is born with a hermaphrodite baby in a very small hunting community on the east coast of Canada. The parents then make the decision to permanently alter their baby to always be a little boy on the outside. Over the years, this decision becomes more and more complicated as the boy, Wayne, reaches puberty and as he grows up and moves away from his parents. Because the book is based in such a small community, we don't just follow Wayne's progress, but one of his childhood friends and her struggle to overcome her own physical limitations.
This book really has a great view of the difficulties in being different, and how it is so difficult and so easy to just love people for the way they are.

xo- ellebee