Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland

* * * 1/2

Available May 7th, 2013

For Cricket Thompson, a summer like this one will change everything. A summer spent on Nantucket with her best friend, Jules Clayton, and the indomitable Clayton family. A summer when she’ll make the almost unattainable Jay Logan hers. A summer to surpass all dreams.

Some of this turns out to be true. Some of it doesn’t.

When Jules and her family suffer a devastating tragedy that forces the girls apart, Jules becomes a stranger whom Cricket wonders whether she ever really knew. And instead of lying on the beach working on her caramel-colored tan, Cricket is making beds and cleaning bathrooms to support herself in paradise for the summer.

But it’s the things Cricket hadn’t counted on--most of all, falling hard for someone who should be completely off-limits--that turn her dreams into an exhilarating, bittersweet reality.

A beautiful future is within her grasp, and Cricket must find the grace to embrace it. If she does, her life could be the perfect shade of Nantucket blue.

It's the cover that sold me on this book. I mean, look at the gorgeous blue ocean! And hey, rolling around on the sand with a hottie can be fun too. Who wouldn't want a getaway like that?

Cricket's dream summer isn't exactly getting off right when she arrives on the island and her best friend Jules is less than enthusiastic about her being there followed by her crush rejecting her. The adversity she faces here and learns to overcome are relevant to this particular time in a teenager’s life. Your friends are everything. Your longstanding crush is your constant obsession. So what does she do? She decides to stay low, give them space and come up with Plan B. This is what I like about Cricket. She may be hurt, confused and at a loss about why her friend has become a major pain but she hangs in there without giving up hope. Knowing that Jules is going through a rough time and that no matter what, she wants to be there for her, Cricket makes the most of the uncomfortable situation to open herself up to new experiences.

Since the invitation  to stay with Jules is off the table, she ends up working at a bed and breakfast where she befriends a fellow “chambermaid”, Liz and becomes an intern for a writer who’s working on the biography of a local celebrity politician. I have to give her kudos for making the most out of things and not just throwing in the towel to run back home because things turned upside down. She uses this time away from her divorced parents to figure herself out. And it’s during this time that an unlikely bond develops between her and someone else that changes her outlook on things but that could also complicate the friendship she's trying to repair.

I won’t go into any more details because to be honest, I simply enjoyed how this story unfolded and I hope that you do too once you read it. It’s not a story with a mind-blowing ending but it has plenty of merits. While most teenagers would be utterly devastated that their best friend isn’t speaking to them or is purposefully shunning them, Cricket puts on a brave face and goes about her business. Though I realize that would be rather difficult to accomplish in the real world, her attitude is something to aspire to. Which is why I stayed up late to finish this book in one sitting – sleep be damned!

Nantucket Blue is simply delightful and it's a nice reminder that sometimes when things don’t exactly go your way, may be it’s because something better is going to happen.

~ Bel

Unbreak My Heart by Melissa Walker

* * * * 1/2 

Sophomore year broke Clementine Williams’ heart. She fell for her best friend’s boyfriend and long story short: he’s excused, but Clem is vilified and she heads into summer with zero social life. Enter her parents’ plan to spend the summer on their sailboat. Normally the idea of being stuck on a tiny boat with her parents and little sister would make Clem break out in hives, but floating away sounds pretty good right now. Then she meets James at one of their first stops along the river. He and his dad are sailing for the summer and he’s just the distraction Clem needs. Can he break down Clem’s walls and heal her broken heart? Told in alternating chapters that chronicle the year that broke Clem’s heart and the summer that healed it, Unbreak My Heart is a wonderful dual love story that fans of Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Susane Colasanti will flock to. (Taken from Goodreads)

Last year I read Melissa Walker’s Small Town Sinners which was a religious coming of age story.  It ended up not being my cuppa but no matter how much I disliked the subject matter and the story, I couldn’t deny the fact that Melissa Walker is an amazing author.  When I heard she had another book coming out and that it was a cotemporary romance I was absolutely thrilled.   

Melissa Walker doesn’t pull any punches in this book.  There are no false hopes.  There are no promises of perfection that is so easy to find in fiction.  Every single person in this story makes a mistake.  Some are disastrous and some are barely noticeable.  The story brings home the fact that not a single one of us is perfect and we will all screw up at least once in our life.  What’s important, though, is what we do with the knowledge our mistakes give us. 

This book brought back lots of memories. We’ve all been there one way or another.  We have all hurt or have been hurt.  And when we are teens we feel like those hurts are the end of the world and there is no redemption.  In this story, Clem did something really horrible.  She betrayed a friend in one of the worst ways possible.  And that betrayal doesn’t necessarily deserve forgiveness.  And when you do something like that and you KNOW that you were in the wrong, how do you move on?  How do you start over?  It’s hard to figure that out.  Especially when you are young and you bottle it in and don’t confide in someone.  As Clem’s summer progresses, she learns to trust her family and new friends with what has turned her world up side down.  And in doing so she doesn’t necessarily earn forgiveness but she learns that life does go on and it does get better. 

I loved this story.  It was honest without being brutal.  Hopeful without being dishonest.  And romantic without being unrealistic.  If you are a fan of Contemporary YA, I can not recommend this book enough.  This book is definitely a Top Ten contender for 2012.

Nat