Contributing to the betterment of our communities requires understanding experiences that are sometimes completely different from our own. In this regard, it is so important for people lucky enough to come from happy, stable homes, to know what it is like to come from abusive homes, and what a child from such a home can go through. Amelia’s Destiny is a story of survival and hope, conveying one survivor’s story of the struggle that is laying the foundation for a stable life on nothing more than hope and determination, after a childhood spent under the state care system. Amelia’s Destiny is also great in that it doesn’t exaggerate the negative and ignore the positive; the author tells both sides of the story, which makes this book inspiring rather than depressing.

Two things would have made this book better. One, there is a lot of repetition; the same information, in almost the same words, is conveyed twice, or even more. Two, the story gets a little convoluted at times. Fortunately, despite these flaws, the book is still a pleasurable and important read, and once you start, you will want to finish it to know what happens to Amelia.