The Lady Vanishes

This is not an easy book to read, or listen to, as was in my case. But it was worth reading. You can see by the cover even that it isn't a "summer read" but it isn't a horribly tragic book either, though it does have some tragedy in it.
Like this title, Vanshing, suggests, Alice is trying to "vanish", she has lost 37 some pounds on her hunger strike because she doesn't want to leave the hospital once she has been admitted for bronchitis. She doesn't want to leave because she believes she has no where to go. Here parents are divorced and her dad is some kind of weird momma's boy who lives with his mother who is really a stain. Grandma doesn't want Alice around, though as far was we, the gentle readers can tell, Alice is a pretty normal kid.
Alice doesn't feel safe living at her mom's house either, because her mom is a big time drinker, as in drinking all day and she's married to Nat who is a pretty rotten stepfather.
In the hospital Alice meets Rex, a boy her own age who has an incurable disease, but he has cheated death about a million times. He's funny and smart and he helps her in ways no one else could and she does the same for him.
I don't want to say anymore, except that his quick book is very different and definitely worth the read.