In the end, this debut feels long and may not contain enough real substance to appeal to even the most avid of summer-camp...
BFFs Emma, Jo, Skylar and Maddie meet up at Camp Nedoba the year after their last summer at the traditional camp, intending to renew their personal vows of loyalty to each other and to enjoy a nostalgic week of s’mores and summer fun.
The lifelong friendships start to crack under the strain of very real adult dilemmas caused by boyfriend trouble, deception and betrayal. The girls are forced to examine their summer-camp relationships through the prism of their increasingly complex lives. Each of the four harbors a secret that is revealed at an inopportune moment. Middle-class Maddie has invented a wealthy family; Skylar doesn’t get along with her demanding father; Emma has a secret, unrequited passion for one of the boys at camp; tomboy Jo, the daughter of the camp owner, realizes that being the life and soul of camp administration is not helping her image in the boyfriend stakes. However, in the end, friendship trumps all, and each girl finds her own resolution to life’s gnarly problems. The chirpy narrative, though introduced in Emma’s first-person, alternates its third-person focus from girl to girl and is punctuated by flashbacks to earlier summers. Despite orienting chapter headers, the lack of differentiation of flashbacks from the present-day story is sometimes confusing.
In the end, this debut feels long and may not contain enough real substance to appeal to even the most avid of summer-camp fans. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59514-672-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Within the standard-issue teen romance is a heartfelt, wryly perceptive account of coming to terms with irrevocable loss...
Jessie’s unassimilated grief over her mother’s death makes her dad’s abrupt marriage to Rachel, a wealthy widow he met online, and their subsequent move from Chicago to her mansion in Los Angeles feel like betrayal.
Rachel’s son wants nothing to do with Jessie. Her first week at his private school is agonizing. When she gets an email from “Somebody Nobody,” claiming to be a male student in the school and offering to act as her “virtual spirit guide,” Jessie’s suspicious, but she accepts—she needs help. SN’s a smart, funny, supportive guide, advising her whom to befriend and whom to avoid while remaining stubbornly anonymous. Meanwhile, Jessie makes friends, is picked as study partner by the coolest guy in AP English, and finds a job in a bookstore, working with the owner’s son, Liam. But questions abound. Why is Liam’s girlfriend bullying her? What should she do about SN now that she’s crushing on study-partner Ethan? Readers will have answers long before Jessie does. It’s overfamiliar territory: a protagonist unaware she’s gorgeous, oblivious to male admiration; a jealous, mean-girl antagonist; a secret admirer, easily identified. It’s the authentic depiction of grief—how Jessie and other characters respond to loss, get stuck, struggle to break through—devoid of cliché, that will keep readers engaged. Though one of Jessie’s friends has a Spanish surname, rich, beautiful, mostly white people are the order of the day.
Within the standard-issue teen romance is a heartfelt, wryly perceptive account of coming to terms with irrevocable loss when life itself means inevitable change. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53564-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Inspiring and heartwarming.
The future is female: Her name is President Diffenderfer.
Best friends since kindergarten, Ava, CJ, Jordan, and Martha tackle their senior year with great aplomb in Watson’s debut. When their senior rite of passage, carving one’s name into the jungle gym at a local park, is threatened by a city council that wants to demolish the park, the girls rally to save the place where they became friends. This is far from their only problem: Though each is talented, they struggle this year with emotional, academic, social, and financial issues. Latinx artist Ava, who lives with depression, desires to find her birth mother and attend art school against her mother’s wishes; white cross-country athlete CJ, who is self-conscious about her body, can’t crack the SATs, so she strengthens her college application by volunteering with disabled children; biracial (black/white) student journalist Jordan lies about her age to interview a handsome councilman’s aide, and a mutual crush develops; STEM-focused white lesbian Martha, named for her ancestor Martha Washington, worries that her family can’t afford MIT. Over the course of the year, the friends weather obstacles and realize the power of their friendship. Their relationship prepares one of the girls to become president of the United States, and the twist ending will come as a surprise. The characters are superbly drawn; portrayed as whole people, the various elements of their identities are not the entirety of who they are.
Inspiring and heartwarming. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45483-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poppy/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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