Unforgettable story of foster teens and second chances.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Violence & Scariness
some
Jaidyn's rape by her ex-boyfriend, which is never described, is a pivotal storyline. A video of Jaidyn lying on the ground after the rape is circulated around school. After being involved in so many fights (including punching a school resource officer in her face), Storm wonders, despite his best efforts, if his violent side might eventually win out. Parker tells Lake about being molested at age 9 by a foster father who took photos of Parker touching herself and touching him and other men and that an older boy once went too far with her. When the foster father turned his attentions to a 6-year-old girl, Parker finally spoke up and turned him in. Storm had a foster brother who'd been burned by his birth mother with cigarettes, and Lake was once cornered in the shower by her mother's boyfriend but was saved by Storm. A traumatized teenage girl kills herself.
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Lake writes about kissing Parker, putting hands between thighs, muted moans, and the taste of Parker on her tongue. Storm remembers a time when there was rain between Jaidyn's thighs. After a foster mother saw Lake and Storm hugging (fully clothed), she tells social services it was incest, and Storm is sent away. While she's on the streets, Lake meets a girl she knew in foster care and learns she's now a sex worker. The twins' mother and grandmother worked as strippers.
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Storm once sold drugs at his high school. After being arrested and taken to jail, he writes about the agony of withdrawal (sweating, shaking, coughing, puking) from Xanax, Prozac, and Molly. Parker and Lake's unhoused friend Teddy tells them that people living on the streets often panhandle, become sex workers, or steal to pay for meth, a drug he calls a plague. Parker's mother uses heroin, and Storm and Lake's grandmother often drank until she passed out. Parker and Lake decline when someone offers them ketamine, Parker smokes cigarettes, Lake occasionally smokes weed, and a high school athlete uses steroids.
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In her Honors English class, Lake reads The Great Gatsby and Beloved. Her foster mother is outraged when she learns that Beloved has been assigned and tries to have it banned. Lake's teacher responds to her outrage by giving Lake a copy of The Handmaid's Tale.
Positive Messages
a lot
Circumstances and even bad choices don't have to define who you are or what your future can be.
Positive Role Models
a lot
Storm knows he's made bad choices in his life. He's sold and used drugs, been arrested, and spent time in juvenile detention, and his anger can quickly turn to violence. But he's never given up hope that his life might have a happy ending. School has always been Lake's escape, the one place she can be a success despite moving through numerous foster homes and schools. Even with this success, she still feels that other students look at her as if she has a big "F" for foster tattooed on her face; that she'll always be an outsider. After all they've been through, it would be easy for Lake and Storm to simply give up, but when they're each presented with the opportunity for a second chance, they don't hesitate to grab it.
Educational Value
some
Lake writes about the realities of living on the streets and the desperation she and Parker often feel. Since they don't have proper IDs, no shelter will give them beds for the night, so they sleep in an abandoned car until someone takes it and all their belongings. It's only because of the kindness of a homeless man named Teddy that they join a small encampment of people living in tents. The girls eat at soup kitchens and use the bathrooms at parks, libraries, and fast food restaurants, washing themselves in cold water sinks. Nowhere is truly safe for them.
Diverse Representations
some
Characters all read as White. Lake and Parker are gay, and Parker has mental health challenges that are never explicitly described. Lake and Parker's foster parents, Colleen and Jay, are very conservative Christians who Lake calls racist Bible thumpers. Colleen is both suspicious and angry about what Lake is learning at her high school and tells Lake the next thing her teachers will be doing is telling students it's wrong to be White or that enslaved Black people were mistreated. Colleen belongs to a group called Scrub the Shelves that wants to ban books like Beloved. At juvie, Storm is warned that a White power group will try to recruit him. A boy Storm meets in lockup has ADHD and is bipolar, and Lake's foster mom, Josie, uses a cane after being in an auto accident.
Parents need to know that Ellen Hopkins'Sync is a heartrending novel in free verse told in unsent letters between 17-year-old Lake and her twin brother, Storm. Both teens are in foster care, and other than one brief reunion, they haven't seen each other for five years. Storm, who's recently spent time in juvenile detention, is living with a kind and supportive foster father and has a girlfriend named Jaidyn. Lake is also in love, but she and her girlfriend, Parker, are keeping their relationship secret from their conservative Christian foster parents. Life for both twins spins out of control after Storm beats up the boy who raped Jaidyn and ends up back in juvie, while Lake and Parker are discovered in bed together by their foster mother and decide to leave and start a life together on the streets. Storm's life has been derailed by a series of fights (including punching and kicking a school resource officer) that have landed him in juvie and lead him to question whether being violent is part of his nature. Drugs have been used or sold by teens and parents. Parker was sexually abused by a foster father, and a traumatized teenage girl dies by suicide. Both Lake and Storm are sexually active, but their encounters are never explicitly described beyond hands moving between thighs, muted moans, and Storm writing about the rain between Jaidyn's thighs. Characters in the story all read as White.
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What's the Story?
Lake and her twin, Storm, have always been in SYNC. When they were little, they could tell each other things without using words and comfort each other without even touching. But after a childhood of abuse and neglect by their mother and grandmother, they've been placed in the San Francisco Bay Area foster system. Initially, they lived in the same foster homes, but they've been separated for five years now, only seeing each other once for a short and traumatizing reunion with their mother. Storm is living with his new foster father, Jim, who's kind and supportive. Storm even has a girlfriend named Jaidyn. Lake's conservative foster parents are suspicious of what she's reading and learning in school, and she can imagine their reaction if they discover that she and Parker, their other foster child, are a couple. The stability Storm has finally found with Jim is shattered when Jaidyn is raped by her ex-boyfriend and Storm beats up the rapist—for which Storm is promptly arrested and charged with felony assault. Lake's life has also been upended. After her foster mother finds Lake and Parker in bed together, Parker convinces Lake that the best thing to do is run. Parker has some street smarts, as she once lived in a car with her mother, but that's not enough to keep the girls safe or find them somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Then, just when things seem the darkest, both Storm and Lake find they may have been given life-changing second chances.
What could have been a relentlessly sad and heartbreaking story becomes one of hope and resilience through the strong and honest voices of twins Storm and Lake. Sync isn't an easy read, and it could trigger teens who've been in or had friends in the foster system. Amid all the chaos and unhappiness in Lake and Storm's lives, Hopkins' story offers messages for readers about the power of simple acts of kindness and generosity and the importance of offering and accepting second chances.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about what Storm and Lake's story in Sync taught them about perseverance.
Lake writes that the empathy she feels for others means she carries their emotional burdens as well as her own. Do you think someone can ever care too much about someone else?
Where do you envision Storm and Lake being in five years? Do you think their stories will have happy endings?
Available on:
Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
Last updated:
August 27, 2024
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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
By Lucinda Dyer
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