At eleven, Gilly is nobody's real kid. If only she could find her beautiful mother, Courtney, and live with her instead of in the ugly foster home where she has just been placed! How could she, the great Gilly Hopkins, known throughout the county for her brilliance and unmanageability, be expected to tolerate Maime Trotter, the fat, nearly illiterate widow who is now her guardian? Or for that matter, the freaky seven-year-old boy and the shrunken blind black man who are also considered part of the bizarre "family"? Even cool Miss Harris, her teacher, is a shock to her.
Gutsy Gilly is both poignant and comic as, behind her best barracuda smile, she schemes against them and everyone else who tries to be friendly. The reader will cheer for her as she copes with the longings and terrors of always being a foster child.
I'm definitely aware that being in foster homes will screw a child up, but for a child to turn out as vindictive and underhanded as Gilly Hopkins, they must have been awful places. Either that or Gilly is a nasty little girl.
Gilly insults & judges black people, overweight people and learning disabled children. She also steals, lies, runs away, fights, manipulates, and thinks nothing of anyone but herself. One day, a letter that she writes has a profound impact on her life, one that she never expected, and though she wishes to take it back, life does not work that way.
Gilly learned a hard lesson, and though she wasn't nearly as horrid by the end of the book, I still did not care for her character.
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