Title of Book: The Deepest Roots
Author: Miranda Asebedo
# of Pages: 320
Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 
 Why This Book has Value: The Deepest Roots does not give a year of when the story happens, but because of how modern and present the book is and is very close to the present day, I would say 2018 since that is when the book was published. It captures a time with modern-day issues and technology. The main location is in Cottonwood Hollow, Kansas during the late spring. An important topic overseen in the book would be the true struggle of poverty. The main character constantly deals with the struggle of her and her mom having barely any money to get by, and although the story goes along well with the issue, I think the book also shows how real and sad poverty can get and how people will give up literally anything so they have a place to live.
The book connects to the issues that almost everyone or most people can relate to. Each character has a different issue and the main issue of friendship and solving relationships and using that connection with your friends when times get super tough.  
I believe the author related to the text in some way, either to all the characters as a whole, related to one of the characters, or knew of friends or family who dealt with one or more of the issues. Although the author hasn’t really presented that they deeply connected to a plot or theme of the story, Miranda was raised in a small town in Kansas just like the characters in her book, which makes her connect somewhat to those characters and use their stories in a similar place to maybe relate to in real-life problems.
The characters learn to face their problems and use their close bond along the way to help each other and solve and overcome the issues they each have to face. They fall to their lows, but their friendship helps them bond even closer and find a way to grow from their situations and past.
Friendships can be the key to solving problems. The theme of friendship and how it got the characters through their struggles in their own lives and with their bond was a major theme.
The way the plot rises, the climax of the friendship and their struggles with each other and their own lives, and the spiraling but eventual solution of the falling actions were structured well to tell a magical and deep story.
In the book, the universal human experiences displayed are poverty, abuse (domestic and sexual), friendships, and responsibilities. Each character either has one or a couple of these issues and being able to see more about those issues in their lives helps the reader to understand how some of these issues can have a certain and major impact on an individual and how those in the real world deal with the situations too.
This book is its own story, the author has another book but has a completely different plot and set of characters. 
The book closely relates to older teenagers, between the ages 14 through 18 would probably fit the best. I think anyone older could read the book as well, but the main characters are teenagers and are getting close to adulthood, making the reading audience relate better to and strike older teenagers more.