Someone Else’s Shoes was about broken homes and divorces, suicide and loss of loved ones, bullying and abandonment. It was also about love and forgiveness, birth and renewal, friendships and the meaning of family. It was an amazing story.
Several times throughout the story, Maggie urged her daughter to “rise to the occasion.” Yet, Lizzie was not the only one that took that meaning to heart. When Ben offered to buy Lizzie sneakers at a Goodwill store because her expensive flats were hurting her feet - this act of essentially wearing someone else’s shoes - moved this story to a deeper and more profound level. This was a great connection to the title.
The author’s well developed characters, with complex personalities, added depth to this story, kept the story flowing and engaged the reader. I especially liked the connection the children formed and their decision making skills. They became positive role models to each other. This was a great read and highly recommended.

This middle school book tackles some serious subjects- suicide, depression, divorce, and feeling invisible to the ones you love- but it does it well.
12 year old Izzy has a full household. Her younger cousin (Oliver), her uncle Hendersen, and now her moms boyfriend’s son (Ben) is staying with them. When Oliver’s depressed father goes missing- Izzy, Oliver, and Ben take a road trip to find him-and end up learning somethings about themselves and the people they love.

Someone Else’s Shoes, a middle-grade novel by Ellen Witlinger, didn’t grab my attention right away, but it did have me teary-eyed at the end of the book. Izzy, a twelve-year-old girl struggling with how to get attention in a family that is undergoing a lot of drastic changes, is someone who I think everyone can relate to. Her parents are divorced, and her mom has been dating a boring dentist with a possibly criminal sixteen-year-old son, and her dad, whom she doesn’t see much anymore, is re-married with a kid on the way. Her aunt recently committed suicide, so when her younger cousin, Oliver, and uncle come to stay with her and her mom, she understandably isn’t the focus of her mom’s attention. On top of that, her mom’s boyfriend’s son, Ben, has to stay with them for a few days, and not only is she not looking forward to that, she’s a little scared about it.

Although suicide is a really tough topic to tackle with such a young age group, it was handled in a way that makes it as understandable as possible. Izzy’s mom tries to help her understand how depression is different from the sadness that everyone feels sometimes, and you can hear her struggling with trying to find the right words. Several of the characters are seeing counselors, and Izzy is able to identify that the goal of counseling isn’t always to make you feel better right away; it’s more about understanding how you feel and why you feel that way and going from there. Izzy tries to bottle up her emotions, which results in some interesting (and sometimes funny) outbursts, but when she tries to encourage Oliver to open up about his feelings, she realizes that she needs to do the same.

Like the title suggests, this book is really about Izzy learning to walk in someone else’s shoes; she learns to see things from her mom’s, her cousin’s, her dad’s, her friends’, and her uncle’s perspectives. She learns that people always have reasons for acting the way that they do and that although changes can be heartbreaking, difficult, and scary, sometimes, families can change for the better.

My favorite part about the book was that all of the characters, including the adults, struggled with the “right” thing to do. No one knows what the right thing to do is all of the time, and sometimes, it takes a band of broken, misfit children to save the grownups.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. This is a book that I would definitely have on my school bookshelf.

I was discussing this book with a friend, today. I said that I thought the book was good, but found it odd that the three main characters had gotten together because they were broken. There had been a two divorces with two of the kids's families and a suicide in the other.

He laughed. "Sounds like middle-school," he said. "That is what happens," he explained. "The outcast kids find each other. They bound that way."

And then, the book which had been a mystery to me, made sense. Of course, like the saying goes, misery loves company. Of course the outcasts would join together.

And once I understood, it wasn't that the author was trying to bunch all these kids together, rather it was that the kids were bunching themselves together. The kids knew the pain the others were suffering.

The book started off rather slow, but picked up speed from there. It is probably a 3.5 star, because of the second part of the book.

I really loved Izzy. The name of the book both refers to walking in someone else's shoes figuratively, but also the theme of shoes runs through this because of a poor choice Izzy made in footwear in the beginning of the story.

Likable, human children. Sad situation. And human adults. Well done.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

An excellently drawn and wonderfully told tale for students and readers alike.

'Someone else's shoes' explores grief, loss and hope. It explores the ripple effect that suicide creates and the bravery needed to overcome loss. Izzy is already dealing with her parents divorce, disconnection with friends and feeling invisible when her uncle and cousin come to live with her after her aunt's suicide. Now she has a little cousin to look out for and a depressed uncle to tiptoe around. Explored from a teenager's point of view, the reader will watch as Izzy's priorities are reshuffled and her mindset changes.