The cards are stacked against the Karen of ["Almost April"] in ways that should make many unadjusted girls feel they are lucky: parents divorced, mother dies, Karen lives with difficult grandmother; grandmother ill…. For us, Karen is an unpleasant sort of girl, even when she begins to see the light and reform her ways, so that all ends happily. It is a story with rather more adult implications than most junior novels; it is well written and expert at describing teen-age emotions.