Willow Chance has always been smart, different, special. Her world built of logic is turned upside down when her parents die in a car crash. After the crash, her support group consists of her dysfunctional school therapist, a Vietnamese family, and a cab driver. That wasn't what Willow was even wanting, but that's how it worked out. Life cannot be divided into neat little sets of sevens, although there is order and beauty to be found in the unexpected. 
 I'm not sure if I have the right words for this book, since it came to me at a time in my life when I needed it most. It seems like the equivalent of what Eleanor & Park did for me last year. There were some things in Counting by 7s that I really needed to hear. And when a book is so personal, it's hard to convey exactly why and how it means something to you because then you have to explain the why and how of your life and even then, it probably won't be completely understood by anyone else. (That was a horrible run-on sentence, for which I apologize.) 
 I could get into the technical details of why Willow Chance is so wonderful. She has a high-functioning brain, but she's at an age where a tragic life event can allow her to see things differently. The idea of counting by sevens (one of my favorite numbers!) and trying to make sense of the world by infusing it with logic and order really hit home for me. There's also the beauty of the garden analogy. This book made me want to go out and plant a whole field of sunflowers. The other characters are all wonderful and weird and real in their own way. Holly Goldberg Sloan has the ability to make her reader chuckle and cry and feel exactly what she probably wanted them to feel in any given chapter. Teen readers will likely enjoy the book, as would adult readers. Basically everybody. Had I been on the committee, I would've pushed hard for this book to win the Newbery medal for last year. 
 All of those things are true, of course, but I'm primarily grateful that Counting by 7s could connect for me on such a personal level. I'm glad that I own it and I'm glad that I'll get to re-read it someday. This is the joy of reading.