Emerson Price cannot remember a time when life was ordinary. She was four-years-old when she and her mom were diagnosed as HIV-positive – infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and eight when her parents divorced. Now she is thirteen and her mother is dead. Emmy moves in with her father and stepmother, but she feels completely alone. Even though everyone has always accepted her, no one – not her father, or stepmother, or even her best friend – understands what it’s like to have to take medicine every single day, to be so afraid of getting sick, and to miss her mom more than she ever thought she would.
When Emmy’s dad and stepmother send her to Camp Positive, a camp for HIV-positive girls, Emmy is certain she is going to hate it. But soon she realizes that she is not so alone after all – and that sometimes letting other people in can make all the difference in the world.
I can safely say that this is probably the most moving books I have ever read. I felt I was on the verge of tears nearly the whole way through, not because it was heartbreaking all the time (though there are moments) but because Courtney's writing makes you FEEL how Emmy is feeling.
I loved that on the surface Positively seems like a story about AIDS but really it's SO much more than that. It's a story of bravery, courage, love and loss. Not only is Emmy living with AIDS - with all the stigma that comes with that - she's just lost her mother, had to move in with her father his new wife and gaining a baby sibling in a mere couple of months.
The passion that Courtney feel's for the subject is evident throughout the entirity of this book, I am a person that gets emotionally tethered to books but I have never been as tethered as I felt whilst reading Positively.
I wish there were more books as heart-wrenchingly true as this.
Rating: 5/5
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