When Julia is dumped by her boyfriend on her birthday, she wishes she could go and cry on her best friend"s shoulder, but Sara"s a bit busy — with Julia"s ex-boyfriend. At least Julia makes a new friend out of it all, even if it is the too-friendly, too-eager, too-fat Tina Hicks from across the road. Tina turns out to be really nice and the only person Julia can talk to about her fear that she may be pregnant. But Julia is so wrapped up in her own problems, it takes her a while to see that Tina"s got stuff going on too — and Tina"s problem is getting bigger. Anne Cassidy decided to write about this subject because she wondered what might drive a mother to put her newborn baby into a box and leave it for someone else to find. “I imagined that she would have given birth in secret and would be sure that no one should find out”, she says. “She wouldn"t be able to do it on her own though — she"d need the help of a really good friend who would keep her secret. This book is about that friendship. It"s also about a baby who needs its mother.” Told from the alternating perspectives of Julia and a thirdperson narrator who describes the search for an abandoned baby"s mother, Birthday Blues is another thrilling page-turner that will appeal to young adult readers and adults alike.