HOLLY JOLLY SUMMER

Fifteen-year-old Darby Peacher falls in and out of love, publicly humiliates herself, and saves an amusement park, all during one summer in a small Kentucky town.

Daughter of the mayor of booming tourist destination Christmas, Kentucky, Darby spends her time texting, watching Andy Griffith Show reruns, obsessing over a boy, and acting as first daughter. She has a peculiar penchant for fruity expressions like “Holy kiwis!” and “What the kumquat was happening?” Darby is jealous of a political adviser who she believes is undermining her close relationship with her father. Following an embarrassing public spectacle, the adviser convinces her father that Darby should keep a low public profile, and he encourages her to get a summer job. Employed as a janitor at an aging amusement park called Holly Jolly Land, Darby must work with a former boyfriend and ends up leading a crusade to block the sale of the park to a mall developer. Setting the story in a town called Christmas gives debut author Stewart license to create a litany of cringe-inducing cutesy names like the Reindeer Games Midway and Christmas Carol-sel, which quickly become tiresome. Darby is white, and there is a lot of diversity in the secondary characters (the town is described as being among the most diverse in the state).

Readers with a taste for innocuous fluff will not find this lighthearted, plot-driven, coming-of-age novel tedious.