A review by nadjatiktinsky
The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani

After her dad is fired from his job, Sonia has to leave her tiny, hippie private school, Community, and go to public school. For the first time, she's around people she hasn't known her whole life. For the first time, her name, the foods she brings in for lunch, the color of her skin, and the fact that she's half Indian and half Jewish are experienced by her classmates as new, strange, and lesser. As Sonia struggles to fit in at school, her home life begins to fracture when her father falls into a deep depression. Hiranandani is a master at emotional adventure stories - books where the highest and lowest swoops felt by the reader hinge on the deeply felt emotions of the characters, not the plot that causes them - and this novel is no different. Really, really fantastic.