With sixth grade—and elementary school—finally over, Lucy is excited about summer. As usual, she’ll be spending it with her widowed father and younger brother in the family’s summer cottage in a tight-knit coastal vacation community in Maine. But two major changes threaten to ruin her vacation. Annoying, almost-a-bully classmate Ian and his family are new summer neighbors, and the PT, her father’s girlfriend (she began as his physical therapist), will be visiting—a lot. Lucy has plenty of issues with the PT, mostly related to her unresolved grief over her mother’s death six years ago. Ian also has issues, which seem to be tied to his high-school–aged sister, Alison. Is she what she first appears—smart, talented and a lot like Lucy—or perhaps a bullying, manipulative liar? To raise money for a kayak, Lucy has carefully organized a babysitting camp for the community’s younger children, patiently dealing with their problems, and she introspectively examines her relationship with Ian in her first-person narration. These signs of maturity make her frequent outbursts over the PT’s gentle overtures out of character. As the summer progresses, Lucy gets to know both Ian and the PT better, discovering that things and people aren’t always what they first appear. A pleasant but never compelling effort that captures the flavor of preteen-hood even if it misses the mark with its protagonist. (Fiction. 9-13)
