Out of control - that's how Lacey Duval feels in almost every aspect of her life. There's nothing she can do about her parents divorce, there's nothing she can do about the death of her young friend, there's nothing she can do about having diabetes - that's what Lacey believes.
After a special summer at Jenny House, Lacey is determined to put her problems behind her. When she returns to high school, she is driven to become a part of the in crowd and win the attention of gorgeous Todd Larson. But Lacey thinks fitting in means losing weight and hiding her diabetes. She starts skipping means and experimenting with her medication - sometimes ignoring it all together.
Her friends from the summer caution her to face her problems before catastrophe strikes. Is it too late to stop the destructive process Lacey has set in motion?
***Spoiler Alert*** Do you like to read about people that have illnesses or have family or life problems? If so then this book is for you. This is a realistic fiction book meaning that this could happen in the real world.
This book is about a girl named Lacey Duval who was diagnosed diabetes at age eleven. Know sixteen year old Lacey Duval is having a hard time accepting her illness and her parents divorce. Until she goes to Jenny House and meets great friends, but once she goes back home she goes back to hiding her illness from everyone at school just to fit in and be normal. One day Lacey wants to loose weight so she starts to mess with her shots and giving herself less every time. Then it get's worse she starts making herself vomit and skipping her doctor appointments. Until one day everything goes wrong. During a play at school Lacey starts to feel tired and dizzy and passes out. Her friend tries to wake her but she wont wake, so her friend gets the teacher. On her way to the emergency room Lacey could hear her Uncle giving commands to start a ICU. After staying in the hospital for awhile Lacey was very scared to go back to school and have people be mean to her, but when she got there after school friends for crew where very nice and caring. They throw a surprise party for her to welcome her back to school and she was very surprised at this.
The author's word choices well explains how the character is feeling. For example when Lacey and her Uncle they are having a serious conversation about how to control her diabetes.The passage also helps show how Lacey is having a hard time accepting her diabetes. Also, how she blames herself for her parents divorce.
In my opinion this book was a very good book. I was very surprised when Lacey had to go to the emergency room and have an ICU. This surprised me because when her uncle/doctor tells Lacey her reports they weren't good. He told her that she could have died. I was very happy that Lacey had survived what could have happened to her.
From the scale from 1-5 I would give this book a 4, because this was a very interesting book and I felt like I was in the book with the character. But there were some part that I really didn't like. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about people with illnesses and sad stories. If you ever do read this book I hope that you like it.
Lurlene McDaniel has been on of my favorite authors since I stumbled across her while I was in middle school. I haven’t picked up one of her books since ninth grade (Telling Christina Goodbye) and now I am wondering just why I waited so long!! Once again Lurlene has managed to spin a tell that kept me wanting more all the time. Instead of lying in bed stressing about bills and other things I can’t control, I laid in bed wondering what was going to come next, what was going to happen and even a time or two I found myself wondering what the characters would be thinking if they were in my place (trying to fall asleep in a dark room).
This book is heart warming and amazing. It deals with sickness, high school and wanting to be ‘normal’ (whatever normal might be). Lacey wants nothing more than to fit into the popular crowd, to be loved and accepted by her high school peers. She starts to play around with her medication in order to loose weight and in turn, she makes herself sicker. She even tries to be with someone she knows is a jerk, a ‘player’ and who is just not good for her just because he holds the popular title. She learns who her real friends are as the book progresses and near the end of the book there are more than a few sappy, happy family moments that make me a little jealous that my own family is still more than a little dysfunctional due to divorce. As someone who has family members with diabetes (two of which fail to correctly take care of themselves), this book made me a little sad to see someone who didn’t take her condition seriously enough. It also made me a little happy to see how far we have came scientifically as far as diabetes goes since this book was published (in 1994). No, there is not a cure… not yet… but there is a new insulin pump (link to the American Diabetes Association’s article on the Insulin Pump) that is pretty awesome!
I was pretty sad to find out after I read the book that it is book TEN in the One Last Wish series, but I am excited to say I will be looking for the rest of the books. I am dying to know what happens next between Lacey and Jeff. I was not satisfied with the ending because she left it hanging between them in a way that was far from satisfactory for me. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a book that moves fast, is hard to put down, has a deep meaningful story full of lessons about health, family, love, growing up and realizing just what is really important in life. Diabetes is not a joke and it is something that should be taken very seriously. Please take care of yourself if you find that you have diabetes, because failure to do so could result into some more serious health issues.
5 out of 5 stars. ^_^;
Read for the 2015 Reading Challenge, for the slot of Set in High School.
I had a great time reading All the Days of Her Life, Lurlene McDaniel tells about the life struggles of a diabetic teen with just a few more juicy details added. The main character is a girl named Lucy who has had diabetes since she was a little girl, she lives in a secret world with her illness... will anyone find out?
She struggles between her mother and fathers divorce and feels as if her diabetes has caused them to separate their lives, she blames herself for it and wonders if her family could ever be repaired, but who wouldn't want a happy family. Does time take its toll on her families strength with her condition?
Lucy and her friends used to go to a place called Jenny's house over the summer, all of her friends had some illness and for that reason they all understood what it meant to not be healthy. They grew a bond tighter than a knot and when Lucy moved to Miami and started at a new school she felt a little lost, she kept her diabetes a secret from everyone so nobody would treat her different. Of course in every school you have the common cliques; jocks, geeks, prettiest girls but Monet was the one to be like, a model. Everyone wondered how she always ate so much but never gained any weight... does she have an illness too?
Lurlene McDaniel shows insight on teenagers with illnesses and how to overcome and accept what it means to have one for the rest of your life, throughout the book Lucy denies that her illness is there, she knows she has to take her insulin shots and manage her blood sugar but never accepts that she has to do this for the rest of her life. I spent my whole time reading the book believing that Lucy might not understand what all her illness is about. Will she ever figure out how to accept it, or will she always be in denial?
I loved how they made the characters real and like with problems that people face with everyday and how they see that people in maybe in the world are having this problem about not accepting who they are and how they are struggling with the fact that Lucy hates having Diabetes and how she doesn't want to get close to anyone that has a sickness that isn't reversible because with the fact that they she loves him he also has a condition where he's a bleeder so in anytime he can be bleeding so much for no reason which i'm not sure what the proper medical name is called they have for this, but the point of this whole book was that it had some romance and it also had the drama with her friends that she has in this story, but the most of the book is about her and her Journey to accepting what she has diabetes, and the whole story how she tried everything to pretend that she didn't have it and how she reduced her insulin so she can start losing weight and then starting throwing up as well so she can get thin until it got very serious and she went the hospital and until then she finally realized that she was doing wrong and tried to change.
Lacey is in high school and just wants to fit in. Her parents are divorced, she feels like she has no control over her life. She also has diabetes. She tries to hide it from her friends at school because she doesn't want to be a freak. She has to give herself insulin shots. She thinks she is fat and that she needs to lose weight so she stops eating. Then she starts playing around with her insulin so she won't be hungry. From there she moves to purging. Sure her weight drops, but her blood sugar skyrockets. Somehow, fitting in just doesn't seem as important as living.
This is an interesting look at juvenile diabetes. Lacey has more problems than just her diabetes, but this is a good insight into the problems of high school girls who want to fit in. There is romance involved as well. Part of the "One Last Wish" series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I didn't care for this one and only read it to get it off my list. Lacey got on my nerves, I know 16-year-olds being obsessed with popularity isn't anything new but even after she nearly killed herself messing with her diabetes and her meds all she cared about was "oh no, everyone at school saw me go into keto, how humiliating, I'm such a freak now". I like to think even at that age most kids would be more concerned with the fact that they almost DIED. And her whole deal with Todd was annoying, the guy clearly only wanted to get some and didn't actually care about Lacey but she still whined when he dumped her.
I liked Terri, though. She was a fun supporting character. I'd read a book about her enjoying life and being awesome and not caring that she wasn't thin. And I am glad Lacey learned from her mistakes and it shows in the next OLW books she's in.
I was so excited to get a book about Lacey! I was always curious about what made her the way she was at Jenny House and that book answered all those questions.
Lacey has diabetes which I never really realized was such a serious disease. I learned a lot in this book and I really saw a change in Lacey as she learned to accept her disease and not run from it. She excelled in her personal life by realizing that there is more to life than to be part of the "in" crowd. She learned that true friends wouldn't judge her for her disease but support her and stand by her. Just like Jeff did though she shut him down time and time again. Now it's her turn to win him back which I assume she will do in the next book at Jenny House.
I used to love Lurlene McDaniel books when I was a kid. I had the opportunity to read several new ones recently that I had not read all those decades ago. They're just as I remember them to be - same format, same writing style, variation on subjects book to book. I was partial to the One Last Wish series, but I had not had the opportunity to read this one previously. The main character of this particular book is even more of a snot than I remember her to be from previous books where she was a side character. Just makes you want to smack her upside the head. Not what I was expecting, but true to the series.
I read this book with my 10-year old daughter who is very interested in stories of young girls who are diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. This story plot kept her engaged and although she is a bit young for this book, she was able to follow several of the story lines and we were able to discuss many issues that came up along the way such as eating disorders, pushy boys, drinking and driving, divorce, self-care, lying, and friendship. I would recommend this book for the middle school student dealing with real adolescent issues, chronic illnesses, etc.
This book is great I love the author I think the way she writes is amazing. I did make a mistake and I didn't read the one that come before this, but it was still very good. But I wish that um... the guy I can't remember his name her um.. boyfriend now I guess kind of well anyways I wish that he would have cared for her in the end like he did before so that was a little disappointing, yet it didn't totally ruin it.
Lacey is smarter than this. If you want a less scary book about diabetes for younger girls (though less realistic) check out Stacey's Emergency. Though it says Stacey can't have any sweets, and talks less about planning her diet out, it doesn't have so much of the dumb things Lacey does to herself or such a climax. It also involves the parents' divorce.
Lacey was a total brat in this book. I get why she doesn't want to deal with her diabetes. It wasn't as spoken about when this book was written, especially not for people her age. But still. If she'd managed it, no one would have even found out. And why is Josh such a push over. I mean, doesn't he have any pride? I wouldn't put up with her. She has told him repeatedly to go away in no uncertain terms. He needs to cut his losses and go.
I thought this was a very good book. I really enjoyed reading it. This book was heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I love Lurlene McDaniel's One Last Wish series. I love the characters and plot of the story and how in each book the characters from other books in the series come together and form a special bond.
I would have preferred to read one of the books in my library, but I saw this at my sister in laws house when I needed something new to read, so I picked it since I have some of the other titles in the series in my library. This one may be more personal to the author because her child has diabetes.
This book was amazing! And so short! Good for a quick one day read. Gosh this book made me cry so much I thought I would need eye drops. The tension between Jeff and Lacey is so tangible, and so unbearable. The end, although at the time might seem like a let down, is amazing and very fitting.
I remember reading this book when I was in middle school, and I remember really liking it! But, nowwww, I don't think I would as much...but hey it's still a good read!
I read many of Lurlene McDaniel's books as a teenager and loved them. I dont know how I would feel about them now but then it was a really nice story that made me cry.