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    A Different Kind of Normal
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    A Different Kind of Normal
    Unavailable
    A Different Kind of Normal
    Ebook492 pages8 hours

    A Different Kind of Normal

    By Cathy Lamb

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From acclaimed author Cathy Lamb comes a warm and poignant story about mothers and sons, family and forgiveness--and loving someone enough to let them be true to themselves. . .

    Jaden Bruxelle knows that life is precious. She sees it in her work as a hospice nurse, a job filled with compassion and humor even on the saddest days. And she sees it in Tate, the boy she has raised as her son ever since her sister gave him up at birth. Tate is seventeen, academically brilliant, funny, and loving. He's also a talented basketball player despite having been born with an abnormally large head--something Jaden's mother blames on a family curse. Jaden dismisses that as nonsense, just as she ignores the legends about witches and magic in the family.

    Over the years, Jaden has focused all her energy on her job and on sheltering Tate from the world. Tate, for his part, just wants to be a regular kid. Through his blog, he's slowly reaching out, finding his voice. He wants to try out for the Varsity basketball team. He wants his mom to focus on her own life for a change, maybe even date again.

    Jaden knows she needs to let go--of Tate, of her fears and anger, and of the responsibilities she uses as a shield. And through a series of unexpected events and revelations, she's about to learn how. Because as dear as life may be, its only real value comes when we are willing to live it fully, even if that means risking it all.

    Beautifully written, tender and true, A Different Kind of Normal is a story about embracing love and adventure, and learning to look ahead for the first time. . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateOct 24, 2011
    ISBN9780758279934
    Unavailable
    A Different Kind of Normal
    Author

    Cathy Lamb

    Cathy Lamb lives in Oregon. She is married with three children. She writes late at night when it’s just her and the moon and a few shooting stars.

    Read more from Cathy Lamb

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    Reviews for A Different Kind of Normal

    4/5

    36 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a great book! A different kind of normal is a story about family, love, and overcoming differences. You will be drawn into this family from the very beginning, and will root for their eccentricities. Readers will laugh, cry, experience heartache, and cheer. Cathy Lamb has written another great book, and this would be a great addition to any bookclub!
    • 3/5
      Jaden Bruxelle is a hospice nurse, who has raised her drug addict sister's child, Tate, since birth. Tate,now 17, was born with an enormous head and has been ridiculed all his life. He is smart, funny and resilient, in a family of off-beat and somewhat witchy characters. Now, he wants to play basketball in the worst way, despite the health risks. Jaden has sacrificed much of her personal life for Tate but Tate is determined to move out from her large shadow of protection and take some chances to fit in with his peers. At the same time, Jaden is hoping to find love with Tate's long-time doctor. This story is off-beat and funny.
    • 5/5
      I LOVED this book! It was...charming, funny, romantic, thoughtful, beautiful, happy, sad, bewitching...I can't think of enough words to describe it. The family dynamics were wonderfully portrayed. I'm now looking for more by this author! In a way, her writing reminded me of Sarah Addison Allen's writing. Not in your face, but wrapping around you like a comfortable soft blanket. Lovely. Try it.
    • 5/5
      Thank you for this free book It is not the type of book I usually enjoy but there was something captivating in the people who inhabited this book. Who could not love the boy and his "boss mother." The fantasy and other details were wonderful as well. Read the book. I have not read any books by this author and am pleased to find a "new person" to read.
    • 3/5
      I have enjoyed other books by Cathy Lamb so, I was excited to win this book from library thing. A Different Kind of Normal started off very strong. I immediately fell in love with Tate! Then I slowly lost interest. I think the fantasy aspect of this book just wasn't for me. I also found the multiple story lines to be a bit overwhelming and taking away from the main plot. Overall, this book was just okay.
    • 5/5
      LOVED this book. A boy with severe disabilities is born to a druggie mom. The mom chooses to give him up to her sister and just walks away from the hospital and him. It's a story of his upbringing by his aunt "Boss Mom" and the trials and tribulations they go through dealing with his disability but also his genius IQ. I absolutely recommend this book.
    • 1/5
      I have tried numerous times to get into this book but I am afraid it is just not my cup of tea. It sounds like an interesting plot but in reality, it is confusing and rather boring.
    • 3/5
      A family descended from witches (at least according to some family members), a curse that manifests itself in each generation, and just plain quirky characters, Cathy Lamb's newest novel has all of this and more. Jaden Bruxelle is a dedicated hospice nurse and an overprotective mother. She adopted her drug addicted sister's baby when he was only a couple of days old and has been protecting Tate ever since. Tate was born with a much larger than normal sized head and misaligned eyes and his appearance has subjected him to a lifetime of bullying and nasty name calling. A genius, he feels that he could endure the taunts and the ugliness if only he was allowed to try out for the basketball team, having devoted countless hours to practicing against his own backboard. But because of his enlarged head and the shunt he had to have placed to drain extra fluid, Boss Mom Jaden refuses to entertain the idea of him playing and risking injury. Her fears for Tate not only prevent him from trying something he loves but they cripple her as well. She's unwilling to pursue a very strong mutual attraction with Tate's doctor Ethan because if she did, ethically he would no longer be able to keep Tate as his patient and she can't risk not having the top doctor available for her boy. Fear reigns over courage for Jaden even though it causes Tate great unhappiness and definitely cools their otherwise incredibly close relationship. She knows that she will eventually have to let him live the life he chooses but she's terrified to give him that chance, to give herself that chance as well. While Jaden wrestles with her unmovable decisions, Tate starts an anonymous blog talking about the reality of being him, the kid with the big head, the one people call a monster or a freak. He is completely honest in his entries giving the reader insight into his opinion of his mother's inability to let him be normal in the one way that means the most to him and about the ways in which he sees the world. While Tate and Jaden argue back and forth about the merits of letting him at least try out for the team, there are quite a few other plot lines weaving through the novel and downright odd characters peopling the pages. There's Jaden's sister and Tate's biological mother, Brooke, a drug addict who abandoned her baby and is threatening to reappear in her family's life, shaky and trying to stay sober; Jaden and Brooke's mother, a famous soap opera actress, flits in and out of the story; and Jaden's brother is a single dad to a little girl with one leg, adopted from India, and to three of the oddest children (triplets to boot) ever created, a retired pro-wrestler, and now a florist who lives just down the street from his uber-competent, tightly buttoned up and clearly repressed sister. Jaden is facing a lawsuit brought against her by the sleazebag son of one of her deceased patients, her back and forth footsy game with the hot doctor continues for much of the novel, and the historical background on the family ancestors and their reputation as witches weaves through the narrative as do Jaden's memories of Brooke's growing addiction. So very much going on between these pages. While the book certainly has some touching moments and explores some important themes, it comes across as altogether too quirky and overloaded with too many major and minor plot lines. Learning to let go is certainly hard and for Jaden it is complicated by Tate's scary medical history but he's seventeen and she continues to hover over him as if he's a toddler. The fact that she likes to go to the greenhouse and mix up herbal combinations, all of which smell of death and forewarn her of a loved one's imminent demise is a bit heavy handed given all the other foreshadowing in the novel. Many of the oddball characters here are too one dimensional to be believable. Tate himself is quite obviously the most wonderful teeenaged boy ever. His small sulky moments just reinforce how unrealistic he really is at all other times. And there are bits that just don't add up about Jaden's concern. She is too terrified of the potentials to let Tate try out for the basketball team and yet the kid has been regularly beaten up throughout his life. The fighting is apparently less likely to dislodge his shunt than playing basketball is. I wanted to like this one so much more than I did. It just went too far over the top for me and didn't reel itself back in with particularly realistic characters. The celebration of oddity and left of normal (by choice or by accident of birth) was fine but to have each and every character have to highlight the fact that our definition of normal is too narrow and reductive was less than subtle and didn't trust readers to get it without handing it to them on a platter. What should have been a warm and quirky read instead descended into predictable and cliched for me and left me disappointed.
    • 5/5
      I received this book from LibraryThing's early reviewer program. I absolutely adored this book from the first word. It is a beautiful redemptive story about the power of love and strong family ties. The story revolves mainly around Tate- a 17 yr old born with physical abnormalities- a very large head, one eye higher than the other, etc.- his mother was drug addicted at the time of his birth. The fierce, undending, indescribable depths of the love between all the family members is absolutely breath taking. I loved Cathy Lamb's style of writing and can not wait to read everything she ever wrote. Kudos to the nth degree!