I read One For The Murphys and the author is Lynda Mullaly Hunt. The main character is a 12 year old girl named Carley Connors. She had an incident with her mother which landed her in foster care with the Murphy family. The main problem is she really wants to go back to her mother. But she cannot leave foster care because her mother is in the hospital. Carley gets really upset at the Murphys and causes chaos in their house. The story takes place in the Murphys household in a quiet little town.

In this book a lot of things happen. Mrs. Murphy makes Carley go to school. On the first day of school Carley meets this girl named Toni, who is kind of mean to Carley. On the next day of school in class there is a boy named Rainer who likes to call Carley names. Carley and Toni both hate Rainer. Then surprisingly Carley and Toni become best friends. One day a policeman comes to discuss with Carley that her mother might have helped someone hurt her. So when Carley’s mother is ready to take her back, Carley does not want to go because of what the policeman said and she has really grown to like the Murphy family. Carley is smart and strong but can lose her temper very easily. She tries not to cry because her mother always said, “Crying is for losers.”

She soon learns that her mother knew something that Carley didn’t know that could change Carley’s mind about leaving.

I really enjoyed One for The Murphys. It is my favorite book because there was always something happening and  there was never a dull moment. Sometimes after I read a paragraph I would picture what that might look like in real life. The author was very descriptive throughout the whole book. I would recommend this book to people who like dramatic but fun books because it is a fun book but sometimes it can get sad. I would also recommend it to people who like a book you can read pretty quickly but not to quickly. I would rate this book five stars.