The absolute best part of Una LaMarche’s Don’t Fail Me Now is Michelle’s voice.  It is aided by LaMarche’s terse storytelling abilities, keeping the action moving along without a single chance to pause.  In the 1st chapter of the story, readers learn that Michelle is a 17 year old senior with a mom who returned to jail on drug charges and two younger siblings to take care of while avoiding CPS.  Michelle is a quick thinking, AP classes kind of student stuck in her mother’s grasp of bad choices.  Extended family actually complicate the situation.  Michelle dad has been MIA for since she was 6. But now he’s dying, which she finds out through Tim, the step brother from another marriage to Leah, who is Michelle’s 1/2 sister of the same dying dad.  Michelle and Leah had never met, though they live in the same town, but Leah wanted to get Michelle the news…and the hope for an “heirloom” which could be money, something that would help Michelle dearly as she tries to hang on to her siblings.  While the realities of the cross country road trip storyline are totally far fetched, LaMarche’s character’s voices are so authentic that readers will want to see how the story ends.