ALA Booklist

Reluctant to leave their small-town Texas home, Garnet, almost 13, and her older sister, Opal, drag their heels when their mother orders them into the truck, drives to an even smaller town in Oklahoma, and dumps them with her sister, an aunt they have never met. Mama heads for Nashville with stars in her eyes and a new guitar in the back of the pickup, leaving Garnet, Opal, and Aunt Julia to pick up the pieces and make the best of their lives together. With a new school to navigate and little money for food and clothing, Garnet tries to find her way while planning how to make her family whole again. The many references to music and events of the 1960s will resonate less with young readers than the timeless emotions of the main characters. And in the convincing first-person narrative, Garnet proves a keen observer and reporter of her own mixed emotions as well as the actions and attitudes of others. An involving novel of hurt, healing, and adjustment.

Kirkus Reviews

When her birthday present is a vacuum cleaner rather than a guitar, Garnet Hubbard's mother loses control. As her father returns to his job, drilling oil in the Gulf of Mexico, her mother uproots Garnet (13) and her older sister, Opal, from their Texas community, unloads them with their Aunt Julia in Willow Flats, Okla. and sets off to make it big in Nashville. It's the early 1960s and although Garnet lives in a house with no phone, car or television, she is aware of the changes happening in society. The teen reacts with the help of her bohemian art teacher, possibly a Communist, who introduces her students to such Mexican muralists as David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. Her Aunt Julia, her aunts' spirited friends and Opal help Garnet move from anger and sadness to acceptance of an imperfect mother and the nature of dreams and family. Tugging at the heart with painful truths and a girl who finds both sorrow and wonderment in them, this is Love's best yet. (author's note) (Fiction. 11-14)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Love's (The Puppeteer's Apprentice) novel set in the 1960s describes the experiences of 12-year old narrator Garnet and her 15-year old sister, Opal, whose vain, demanding mother prizes her dream of becoming a country singer more than her so-called """"precious gems."""" Garnet's narration takes a while to find the right pitch, but when it does it hits some high notes. After the girls try to orchestrate the perfect birthday for their mother, their father ignores their advice to get her a coveted guitar and instead gives their mother a vacuum cleaner; she explodes, plucks the girls from their Texas home, and drops them with her sister, Julia, in backward Willow Flats, Okla., so she can finally try her luck in Nashville. Garnet struggles against her shame at being poor and her anger towards her mother; when she finally tracks her mother down, she realizes the extent of the woman's betrayal (she has been stealing their father's disability checks, while the children and their aunt have been near starvation). Cultural references to the space race, sit-ins in the South, speculation about Senator Kennedy running for president, all help to place the narrative in the context of its time. However, the import given to Garnet's evolving passion for art seems overblown. Ultimately, what will stay with readers is the heroine's gradual realization that to her mother she's only """"semiprecious,"""" and her courage to embrace life anyway. Ages 10-14.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-7-Feisty Garnet Hubbard, 12, endures a difficult school year without her parents. Her father is in the hospital recovering from severe burns sustained in a work-related accident. Her mother, Melanie, intent on pursuing her dream of becoming a country-and-western singer in Nashville, has taken Garnet and her older sister, Opal, to live with their Aunt Julia. Rural and deeply conservative Willow Flats, OK, in the early 1960s is different from the girls' hometown in Texas, and they miss their old way of life. They are also worrying about their father and having to deal with their mother's selfish betrayal and abandonment. By the end of the school year, they are happy to be going home to their healed dad, yet sorry about leaving their new friends and their aunt. That they are not reunited with their mother teaches Garnet about some of the costs-not only to oneself, but to others-of pursuing one's dreams. Love's descriptions are nicely evocative of a different time and place, but it is the intriguing questions she poses that make her an author to watch.-Catherine Ensley, Latah County Free Library District, Moscow, ID Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.