Following her parents' bitter divorce, Auden has the chance to spend the summer with her dad and his new family in a charming beach town. There she meets Eli, and together they embark on parallel quests.

Reviews

The YA author's ninth book, following Lock and Key (2008); Rachel Botchan reads. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Gr 8 Up-Studious and successful but socially awkward, 17-year-old Auden has spent her childhood and teenage years acting and being treated like an adult. Planning to relax and get some reading done during the summer before she enters college, Auden instead decides to spend the summer with her dad, his young wife, and their newborn baby in a small, charming costal town, Auden begins to experience some of the things that she missed out on growing up-from bike riding and food fights to friendship and romance. Rachel Botchan perfectly narrates Sarah Dessen's absorbing story (Viking, 2009) of growth and discovery, convincingly voicing the realistic dialogue and the teen characters with all the nuances of their personalities and attitudes. Auden, in particular, is a fully drawn, complex character, and Botchan captures her intelligence and insecurities by highlighting the thoughts and emotions behind Auden's complicated relationships with her parents and her feelings about their divorce, her changing attitude toward the girls she encounters and her stepmother, her feelings about the intriguing young man she meets, and her transforming summer. A solid performance of a realistic and engaging tale.-Amanda Raklovits, Champaign Public Library, IL Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Studious good girl Auden, named for the poet, makes a snap decision to spend her summer before college at her father's beach house rather than with her mother, a professor whose bad habits include male grad students. Auden's parents divorced three years earlier, a split she's not yet over. Her remarried father has already produced another heir, a colicky baby named Thisbe (after a tragic figure from Shakespeare), with his young wife, Heidi, who owns a boutique. Feeling sympathy for stressed-out Heidi, Auden agrees to do the shop's bookkeeping, providing her with an instant social circle-the teenage clerks plus the boys from the neighboring bike rental, including hunky, wounded Eli. Both night owls, Auden and Eli bond when he coaxes her to experience childhood activities-bowling, food fights, learning to ride a bike-that her insufferable parents never bothered to provide. Auden's thoughtful observations make for enjoyable reading-this is solid if not "top shelf" Dessen: another summer of transformation in which the heroine learns that growing up means "propelling yourself forward, into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time." Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

"Beautifully captures that sense of summer as a golden threshold between past regrets and future unknowns." -"The Washington Post"