Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer.

     I LOVE this book. I love all Joan Bauer books. But this was my favourite. I finished this book last night at 12:28am. No joke. 

    

     Hope Yancey (her birth name was Tulip, but she didn't like and got it legally changed at the age of 12) lives with her Aunt Addie. Her mum, Deena, didn't want the responsibility of a daughter so she gave Hope to her older sister. Hope has never met her father. Feeling that a part of her is missing, she still has high hopes of him finding her. 

     At 14, she was given a waitressing job in the Rainbow Diner in Pensacola, Florida. From that day on, she believed waitressing was her destiny. Hope has had three waitressing jobs over the last two and a half years - from Pensacola to Brooklyn - living in three different time zones. In Brooklyn, Addie had been chief cook and part owner with Gleason Beal. Now they are forced to leave as Gleason  stole all the money from the restaurant and fled. 

      Every time they left a place, Hope would write "Hope Was Here" somewhere no one would see. 

     Now 16, she and her Aunt forges forward to a new town - Mulhoney, Wisconsin - where a professional manager and cook (Addie) and a waitress (Hope) was needed. 

     The owner, G.T. Stoop, was recently diagnosed with leukemia and needs help around his diner, Welcome Stairways. 

    The other waitresses, Flo and Lou Ellen, the Russian busboy, Yuri, the diner cook, Eddie Braverman and G.T. Stoop instantly makes Hope feel welcomed at her first day at work. 

     G.T. Stoop suddenly runs for mayor against the recent, very corrupt mayor, Eli Millstone. Everyone thought of Stoop as crazy since in his condition, he should be resting. Eli kept trying to demolish G.T.'s campaign, but every time G.T. would overcome it and continue not fighting back as he thought it "unnecessary". 

     Millstone's campaign decided to spread the false rumour suggesting that G.T.'s cancer spread to his brain. The group of students helping out tried to persuade people it was a lie and how trustworthy and kind G.T. is. However, they were too late to convince the townspeople in time and G.T. loses the election. 

     A few weeks later, Eddie and Hope discovered that Millstone altered the election. G.T. then becomes mayor, loses his leukemia, marries Addie and adopts Hope as his own. Everybody got what they wanted. Suddenly, two years later, G.T.'s leukemia returns and dies after Hope tells him that she thinks of him as her real father the one she was looking for all this time.

     I cried. I'm not weak. It's just this book is too strong.