Always and Forever By Lurene McDaniel

Melissa Austin is a typical sixteen year old girl who works hard to keep her grades up and has a lot of friends. Everything is going smoothly  until, a teacher discovers she has a bruise on her leg and gets the impression that Melissa's mother is beating her. Later on, she discovers that she is diagnosed with Leukemia. With her health hanging on by a thread, can Melissa take it day by day or will things fall apart??

I've read Where the Red Fern Grows as a young kid and it's a very melancholy book filled with death and hard decisions.  In my personal life, my great-grandpa was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003 and things got worse.  In fact, he died two days before Christmas! This book was one of the hardest ones to read due to the fact that it brought back memories of when my grandpa was still alive. It tears me apart just thinking about him being gone. Both Where the Red Fern Grows and Always and Forever deal with the sadness and loss of loved ones.