A Friend for Hope by Amie White

A Friend for Hope by Amie White
Publisher: Noctilune Publishing
Genre: Children’s (0 – 6 y.o.), Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Nine-year-old Zoe Meadows is the new kid in Ivy Creek. For homeschooled Zoe, every day starts the same: breakfast, then to the living room where Miss Ellis awaits. Only today, Zoe can’t focus—not when she notices neighborhood children playing outside, children she’s yet to meet. Watching all this unfold, Zoe’s parents decide it’s time for a companion—the furry kind, to be precise.

Everything changes when Zoe meets Hope at the dog shelter for the first time. The two girls form an inseparable bond over the following months and find in each other the one thing they both craved for a long, long time: a forever friend.

Loneliness isn’t forever.

Zoe was a sweet and kind protagonist. Many of the picture books I’ve reviewed have focused on more extroverted and sometimes noisy children for a variety of reasons, so it was refreshing for me as a reader to have someone leading the storyline who was a gentle and quiet soul. There’s something to be said for including all sorts of different personality types in fiction, after all!

I did find myself wishing that the plot had explained why Zoe didn’t seem to spend much time with people her own age since homeschooled children can still participate in all sorts of classes and extracurricular activities that will introduce them to potential friends. My first thought was that maybe she was immunocompromised or had some other serious health problem that made socializing in large groups unsafe for her. While I don’t know if this is what the author was intending to hint at, I would have loved to know more about her backstory and would have chosen a full five-star rating if the narrator had told us why adopting a dog was a better option for the main character than socializing with other children.

With that being said, I thought the adoption of Zoe’s new pet was a heartwarming chapter in her life. I especially appreciated the fact that Hope needed some time to warm up to the family after the stress of being abandoned and living at the noisy animal shelter for so long. This was a great reminder that how a new pet behaves at the shelter or at home for the first little while isn’t always the same as how they’ll act once they feel safe and loved.

A Friend for Hope was charming.