Quarter 2 Book Review

Three Little Words
Three Little Words is a memoir about a little girl named Ashley Rhodes-Courter who was born to a teenage mom and was surrounded by the people she loved. However, her mother got a new boyfriend, who turned out to be abusive, which completely shaped Ashley's future.
Ashley, her brother, her mother, and her mother's boyfriend Dusty are on their way to Florida when things take a change for the worst, and her mother and Dusty get arrested. That moment caused the next nine years of Ashley's life to be spent in fourteen different foster homes, separation from her younger brother, and years of longing to be with her mother. Her mother always told her that they would be together soon, but Ashley never knew when “soon” was, or how long it would be until they could even just have another monitored visit. Eventually, Ashley's mother does not come to see her anymore.
Ashley remembered her mother's words throughout her time in foster care: “You're my baby, and I'm your only mother. You must mind the one taking care of you, but she's not your mama.” These words prevented Ashley from forming any kind of relationship with the families who took her in, no matter how nice they were to her.
A few of the families that were selected to be Ashley's foster families did their best to make her feel at home and be a regular kid, while others, especially one wicked family, put her through hell. As she moves from place to place, she rarely gets to keep the few possessions she has, and she does not get to see her brother Luke very often. She's moved from school to school, social worker to social worker, and her hope is constantly being built up and torn down. As she is moved around, she sometimes finds herself breaking rules and getting into trouble.
In Three Little Words, Ashley tells her touching story of how, through the worst of times, one can believe, have faith, and succeed. Although her childhood was spent in many abusive situations, Ashley Rhodes-Courter finds her happiness at the end of the story when a family who loves her very much adopts her when she is twelve years old. The title implies the three words she says in court when the Judge asks her if she wants to finalize the adoption: “I guess so.” Her record of switching families so much left her unsure of this one, too, and just anticipating her relationship with the new family to end someday.
I would definitely suggest this book to my friends and family, because I thing that it addresses many important issues and topics. It's also just a good read for anyone, with its enticing vocabulary and hypnotizing storyline. I could barely put the book down. Ashley says that writing this book helped her to make sense of her troubled life, and though I cannot relate to her story, while I read about her childhood, I felt like I had a better understanding of the tough times some people go through that you wouldn't realize.