Thanks for the review Donna.  It's fun sometimes to have the characters and storyline be analyzed by others.  It gives me insight into what the readers are feeling and sometimes gives me new things to write about.  What I've heard several times over now is that readers are mad at Jo and think she's a bit evil.  Let me explain a little more in depth here just to clarify for anyone who feels this way about Jo:

1) At the point when Jo had kicked Harry out, she did not know he had been abused, only that his family (for some unknown reason) had left him by himself.  She wasn't thinking about the harm she would cause Harry by asking him to leave because she did not know it would cause him harm.

2) Joanna is a single parent who has lost her husband and two other family members.  All she has left is Sam and his cousin Jason.  If that wouldn't be enough to make her an overprotective mother, we've also got to look at the fact that mothers in general just want to protect their chilidren, and will always put their children first (even over step fathers and other family members... unless they just don't care about their kids).  On top of that, we know already that Sam has had issues being picked on, bullied, taunted, and beaten up by bullies in the neighborhood in the past and on multiple occasions.

When I wrote that portion of the story, these were the two things on my mind.  Jo did not kick Harry out because she's a bad person, and she didn't do it because she's mean.  She did it for the sole reason that she walked in to hear someone being mean to her son, a son she feels a deep need to protect from anything that might hurt him.  Sam has lost a lot too losing his dad and aunt and uncle, and to have people sitting there telling him that they hate him, or to say other rude things... it was enough to make Jo snap, and try to remove any person who is doing anything she perceives as 'harmful' to her son.  She was also feeling a bit betrayed, to have a guest she'd welcomed into her home, someone her son had become good friends with, turn around and say something she perceived to be so harmful to her only child.

That being said, it's unfortunate that Harry already had abandonment issues at that point, and so her kicking him out just brings up the same old issues in new ways for Harry (more angst for me to write about), but none of this was her intentions.  I cannot say as a mother, that if a guest (whoever that might be) were taunting or being mean to my daughter, that I would not also tell them that they are no longer welcome in my home.  I don't care if it's a family member or a friend, if someone comes into my home and hurts my daughter in any way, they're going to be forced to leave, even if it will hurt their feelings.  But again, Jo wasn't even thinking of Harry's feelings, only of protecting her son.

I hope this clears things up for readers.  Thanks for the review!