Fiction Archives - Page 3 of 32 - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Today Tonight Tomorrow

By Brookelorren on July 27, 2020July 26, 2020Leave a Comment

There are some books that, just hearing the title, brings a smile to your face. Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon is like that. I had the opportunity to receive an advanced reader copy (thank you Netgalley and Simon Pulse!) and this is a book that will probably get a reread from me sometime in the future.

Rowan Roth is an overachieving graduating senior at a Seattle high school. She always tries to be the best at everything. There’s only one thing that keeps her from being the best: Neil McNair.

They fight about being the best at everything. It’s the last day of school, and there’s only one more day to try to best Neil. Question 1: which one of them is going to be valedictorian? Question 2: will one of them win Howl, the senior year scavenger hunt, which comes with a pretty sweet prize?

Well, that I won’t give you the answer to. But I will tell you that circumstances force them to work together, and that over the course of the competition, they end up falling in love.

There are so many things I loved about this book! Before coronavirus closed down the gym, it was my hot tub book. I’d go to the gym, get a good workout in, and then reward myself by sitting in the hot tub with my waterproof Kindle, reading this book. I was happy to sit there and prune up because this book was so good. When the gym closed down, it was one of the things I was sad about. I had to find a new routine to finish this book.

For one, I loved Rowan and Neil’s competition. You know how in a book two characters say they hate each other, but as the book progresses, you realize that their professed hatred actually masks caring for each other? That’s what goes on in this book. It cumulates in a scene at the top of a Ferris wheel that put me in tears.

Another thing I loved about this book is that it focused on regrets. On wasted time. Haven’t we all been in a situation where we wished we had done something differently? Rowan realizes that maybe she should have spent a little more time living throughout high school rather than fighting with Rowan to be the best.

Since this is a romance, it does end with a happily ever after (or at least a happy for now). And of course, you can see on the cover that they eventually will get together. This is a wonderful journey with funny moments, touching moments, and moments that will leave you in tears. It has an overall happy vibe that–in this world currently overrun with social distancing and viruses–may be just the thing you need in this world. I highly recommend it.

10 Things I Hate About Pinky

By Brookelorren on July 26, 2020July 26, 2020Leave a Comment

Sandhya Menon’s books are always so amazing! Her most recent book (out last Tuesday) was 10 Things I Hate About Pinky. It’s the third book in the Dimpleverse, and if you haven’t read the others, you should! This latest book stands on its own, but! If you read them in order, you’ll be familiar with some of the characters and situations and it will be a little bit cooler.

I haven’t written a lot of reviews lately (I’d love to fix that at some point) but today’s review is going to be a little different than normal. I’m writing a list:

10 Things I Love about 10 Things I Hate About Pinky

1. Pinky. Pinky is such a great character! We meet her first in There’s Something About Sweetie, but we get to know her a lot better in this book. She’s such a sweet, caring person. I love how we get to see this side of her in this book.

2. Samir. Samir, who begins a fake-dating relationship with Pinky, is almost her opposite. While Pinky is a free-spirit, Samid has a planner and his life revolves around it. Over the course of 10 Things I Hate About Pinky, he learns that some things just can’t be planned. Including how he ended up fake-dating Pinky in the first place. It happens towards the beginning of the book, but I’ll leave that up to you to discover.

3. Family relationships. We mostly get to see the relationship between Pinky and her mother, but there are other relationships here. Her mother starts out as very antagonistic towards Pinky, but they work things out. Samir and his mother have some things to work out too. We don’t see much of her here, but their relationship does evolve.

4. Friendships. The main friendship here is between Pinky and Dolly, whom we haven’t met before. We hear a little from Ashish as well. Summer friendships are great!

5. Saving the World! Okay, Pinky and Samir don’t exactly save the world, but they do try to save their little part of the world, which is under threat. While I won’t say whether they succeed or not, they get involved in a little protesting.

6. Animals! Pinky rescues a wild animal early on in the book. Also, there’s a butterfly habitat that Pinky and Samir visit. Both animals play roles in the book.

7. Laugh out Loud. One of the things I love about Sandhya Menon’s books is that they are funny. There were several places where I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud.

8. The Cover. This is such a beautiful cover! I think it personifies Pinky perfectly. It would have been cooler, maybe, if there was a butterfly on the cover, but it matches the rest of the Pinky set, and it’s so happy.

9. Uh Oh. The Big Misunderstanding. Of course, not everything in this book could be as happy as the cover, could it? There are several misunderstandings that are cleared up, including a huge one that almost tears Pinky and Samir apart.

10. The Happily Ever After. You couldn’t call this book a romance without it.

So, was there anything I hated about 10 Things I Hate About Pinky? Absolutely not! I loved this book. It just came out last Tuesday, and I encourage you to go pick it up. If you like fake-dating and enemies to lovers, then you’ll probably like this too.

Fractures

By Brookelorren on June 19, 2020June 19, 20201 Comment

It’s been a while since I read (and loved) Echoes by Alice Reeds. So when I got the chance to review Fractures, the sequel to Echoes, I was excited! Thank you Netgalley and Entanged Teen for the Advanced Reader Copy. Echoes was a twisty story with two different timelines. It ended on a cliffhanger, but when I originally read it, I wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be continued or not. The sequel did not disappoint. You can see my review of Echoes here.

Because this review is for the second book in a duology, there may be spoilers.

Things To Like

Just like in Echoes, it’s twisty and there’s two timelines! In the original book, it took a while to figure out what was going on. Are these two different timelines? Is one of them real and one of them not? What’s going on? Eventually you figure it out, as do Miles and Fiona, our main characters.

You get to know Miles and Fiona more. Some people thought there was instalove in the first book, although I liked how their relationship went, but we get to learn more about their characters here. Once again, they’re facing danger, and we get to find out more about them, their families, and how did they end up in this mess?

New characters! Fiona and Miles make new friends in their struggle (which I’m purposely being vague about). Can they be trusted in a world where nobody can figure out what is real and what is imagined? I can’t reveal that.

A satisfying ending. While the end of Echoes made me think ??? is this deliberately a weird ending like the rest of the book? Fractures has a logical and satisfying conclusion. We finally find out what happens to them!

Other Notes

I enjoyed this book, but I didn’t find it as compelling as Echoes. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve been having difficulty reading as much as I had been. I don’t know why. I couldn’t put the first book down and read it in one day. It took three days to read Fractures.

Conclusion

Are you looking for a duology that is twisty, mysterious, and keeps you turning pages? I recommend this duology. If you haven’t read Echoes yet, you’d definitely want to start there. If you have read Echoes, then you’ll probably want to find out what happens to our two main characters. You won’t be disappointed.

Summer 2020 TBR

By Brookelorren on June 16, 2020June 16, 202027 Comments

Hello! Another week has snuck by… but it’s Tuesday again, which means Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today we’re talking about our TBRs! I love TBR week, although lately I haven’t been doing quite as well on my TBRs lately, but we’ll see that in a moment.

How did I do on my Spring TBR?

Between Burning Worlds – Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell: Read
Chosen Ones – Veronica Roth: Read
Malediction – Katerina King: Read
Conquest – Celeste Harte: Unread
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Suzanne Collins: Read
1453 – Roger Crowley: Read
Descendent of the Crane – Joan He: Unread
Keeper – Kim Chance: Unread
99 Percent Mine – Sally Thorne: Read
Tell Me Everything – Sarah Enni: Read

So this quarter I had a 70% success rate. I might have finished a couple more, but I started reading the Twilight series.

So what do I hope to read this summer? There are no new must-read books for me, so the books listed here are: 1) the three I didn’t read in the spring and 2) books I picked from the TBR lottery.

Celeste Harte is one of the hosts of Character Chaos on Twitter. I’ve been wanting to read Conquest for a while. It was on my spring TBR, after all! I really want to get to this one first. I have a few ARCs to read that I need to get to, but this is probably the first book from my TBR I intend to conquer.

Descendant of the Crane has been on my list for quite a while too. I wanted to read this one since it was an ARC (I wasn’t approved). Let’s hope I can get to this one this summer.

Kim Chance used to host Chance2Connect on Twitter once a month. Sadly, June’s Chance2Connect was the last one, but I still want to read her book, Keeper. This was on my list of Spring 2020 books, but I didn’t get around to it.

Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds has been on my radar for quite a while now. It sounds so interesting! He read some of his book at a Zoom event a couple months ago, and I liked what I heard so far!

Mirror Gate is the second book in The Harbinger series. I read Storm Glass last year, and I bought the rest of the series when it was on sale on Amazon.com (gotta love those $1.99 books) but I haven’t read past the first book yet.

The Bride Test has been on my radar for a while too. I liked The Kiss Quotient, and am looking forward to reading the second book in this series.

I first heard of Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour from my fellow Top Ten Tuesday bloggers. It sounded good, so I added it to my TBR. It won the lottery for this summer, and it seems like such a summery book!

It’s been a very long time since I read The Third Target, which is the first book in the J.B. Collins series. The First Hostage is the second book, and it won the TBR lottery for this season. It’s definitely different than the other books on this list, but it should be a nice change of pace. I love Joel C. Rosenberg’s books.

I got A Curse So Dark and Lonely on sale quite a while ago, but I haven’t read it yet. This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. Hopefully it will be really good!

I never read Little Women (I have an antique copy and I think I read one page before I lost interest; I was really young at the time I tried to read it though). This was one of the books on Bookish First a month or so ago, and I liked the beginning (sadly, I was too late to use my points to get a copy). I do hope to read Jo & Laurie this summer though.

So these are the books I hope to read this summer! What books do you hope to read? Next week is Top Ten Tuesday’s 10th Anniversary! I don’t know what option I’m going to pick yet.

Tell Me Everything

By Brookelorren on June 4, 2020June 1, 20202 Comments

Hello! I’ve been horrible at writing reviews lately, but I need to turn Tell Me Everything, by Sarah Enni, back into the library and I haven’t reviewed it yet! I liked this story and the pages flew by. I think the description doesn’t really do it justice.

Ivy and Harold are best friends. Ivy is shy and retreats into her art and photography; Harold is a high-achieving academic who wants to be involved in almost every club in school.

Things change when Harold goes to summer camp. He comes back stressed about getting into a selective college; Ivy spent the summer taking pictures and following the new anonymous art app, VEIL. VEIL allows people in your local area to post art anonymously, which gives people more freedom to be themselves. Once school returns, Ivy starts figuring out who some of these VEIL posters are, and starts to give gifts to them anonymously.

The Issues

I didn’t expect Tell Me Everything to be a book that explored important issues. Nothing in the description indicates that. But then, someone posts an anti-homosexual rant on VEIL. The site goes from being a fun place for teens to express themselves to one that has gathered the attention of unhappy parents. The book explores the issues of anonymity, free speech, and how sometimes anonymity causes people to behave in ways they wouldn’t do if they had to have their name attache to it–and not always in a good way.

When Ivy starts figuring out who these people are and starts giving them gifts, I start to see how this might not end well. Because not everybody wants other people to find out their secrets. And even if you do figure out someone’s secret, sometimes it’s better that they don’t know you know. I don’t want to give the ending away, but Ivy ends up learning that her good intentions don’t always work out so well.

Plot Twist!

Tell Me Everything has an interesting plot twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. In a good way though. I thought the end was going to go one way, but it went in a different direction. It was a believable end though, so I wasn’t left disappointed or confused. I was very happy with the end.

Conclusion

I liked Tell Me Everything, and was glad I ended up reading it. It’s a book that I didn’t really hear much about when it came out (I heard about it through someone’s book recommendation) but I hope more people hear about it. The voice is great, the issues it discusses are relevant to what teens (and adults) are going through today, and it’s got a storyline that makes you want to keep reading. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you give it a chance.

Books that Give off Summer Vibes

By Brookelorren on June 2, 2020June 2, 202021 Comments

Hello! Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) where we talk about books! This week’s topic is “Books that Give off Summer Vibes.” Although for our Australian friends, I’m expecting to see some winter books.

Summer is my favorite season of the year, and I’m so happy that the warmer weather has begun! I’ve started to go outside on nice days, sit in a lawn chair, and read a book, with a turned over bucket as a table. But I think I’m getting patio furniture today! So I’ll be sitting on that instead soon. Anyway, here are some summery books. Some I’ve read, some I haven’t.

This summer, I’m really hoping to reread Summer Days and Summer Nights. I read it two years ago, and I loved it. It has so many good stories in it, including “Inertia” by Veronica Roth, which I adore (but really most of these stories are good). I’ve kinda been hoping this book would drop in price. It’s been on my watch list at eReaderIQ for months now, and the price has gone up instead. Well, I know my library has it, at least.

I don’t know if The Weight of Feathers happens during the summer or not, but this book makes me think of summer. I read it on a hot summer day in July a couple years ago, so maybe that’s why it makes me think of summer. Also, some of the characters are mermaids. So there’s that.

I have a hardcover copy of Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West, but I haven’t read it yet. It didn’t win the TBR lottery last summer or fall, and I didn’t think it would make a good winter book, so I took it off the TBR during the cold months. Maybe I’ll get around to it this year. It has water on the cover–how much more summery can you get?

Start Here by Trish Doller takes place over the summer, I read it during the summer, and it takes place on the water. This is such a great book. I will definitely have to give it another read some summer. Maybe not this one, but someday.

I didn’t read Alex, Approximately in the summer initially, but this is another book that takes place in the summer that gives me major summer vibes. There’s water on the cover to this book too!

It’s been years since I read How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It takes place in Jamaica. I’ve been to Jamaica twice, although neither time did I go hang out on a beach resort like Stella did. Anyway, beachy vibes, Carribbean island, how many more summer vibes do you need?

Echoes, by Alice Reeds, also gives me summery vibes. A lot of the book takes place on a tropical island. Now’s a good time to read this book, because the sequel, Fractures, just came out! It’s what I’m reading now.

Today Tonight Tomorrow takes place at graduation. What can be more summery than graduating from high school? It takes place in Seattle (not quite known for it’s beach weather) but it’s a great book.

I initially read City of Bones in the summer. I remember reading this book on the beach while watching my kids swim at the lake. This book also takes place during the summer. So it gives me some summery vibes, at least.

What can be more summery than going on a road trip? Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour not only takes place during the summer, but it’s a road trip! I haven’t read this one yet, but it’s in the TBR lottery, which is where I put books I would like to read, but randomly draw numbers to see which books I’ll read.

So here are some summery books! How about you? Are you looking forward to summer reading? What books give you summer vibes? Next week we’re going to talk about books we’ve added to our TBR and have forgotten why. Hmmm. I may tweak that topic a bit. But either way, I’ll see you then!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

By Brookelorren on May 27, 2020May 26, 20206 Comments

When I first heard they were doing The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a Hunger Games prequel, last year, I was only mildly interested. Sure, I went to see all the movies, and it was one of the book series I’ve read in both Spanish and English, but it’s been at least 5 years since I’ve read it. Do I want to go back to the world? It turns out, the book was pretty good and now I want to reread The Hunger Games at some point.

The book centers on Coriolanus Snow, which, if you’ve read The Hunger Games, is an antagonist from the series. How is this book going to work out, making him likable? We’re all the heroes of our own stories, I guess. It turns out, I was pleasantly surprised.

What I Liked

What I liked most about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was how it gives so much backstory into the original The Hunger Games trilogy. When we’re first dumped into the 74th annual Hunger Games, the capital has everything down already. They’re exciting (if not gruesome) to watch, there’s stakes for all the districts involved, and sometimes people actually volunteer for these things. The victors are rewarded! The 10th Hunger Games–not so much. They’re still figuring these things out. We get to see how these things are put into motion.

Then there’s “The Hanging Tree.” People have been talking about the origins to this song for years, wondering where it came from. It’s stuck with me for years, and I remember the tune still. We get to find out the story behind this song. I love it when book series tie into each other across a character’s universe (maybe that’s why I like shadowhunters books so much). There is so much here that brings Panem to life. It’s great.

Then there’s the story itself. Coriolanus is a sympathetic character–for most of the book. This is not the capital we’re used to, full of wealthy, privileged, and clueless citizens. While it is true they’re better off than everybody in the districts, Panem is only 10 years away from a devastating war. I have a German textbook written in the late 1970s, and from the impression I get from that book, they were still recovering from World War II (the infrastructure was so bad that telephone calls were a luxury). I found myself rooting for him throughout the book. He’s a mentor for the 10th Hunger Games, and gets assigned to the girl from District 12.

He’s thrown a lot of challenges and he has to overcome them. At the same time, despite his challenges, you see the ambition that eventually turns him into President Snow. His mentee is a great character as well, and you want to root for her too.

What I Liked Less

While I can’t say there was anything I disliked about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, there was a part that surprised me. After the Hunger Games end, there’s still a third of the book left. What? Initially, it felt like the story should have ended there. However, the last third of the book shows us how Coriolanus Snow turns from a sympathetic character to being set on the path that leads him to becoming the villainous President Snow 64 years later. It also contains the origin to the song “The Hanging Tree,” which I really enjoyed.

Conclusion

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an enjoyable story that gives us a lot of background into The Hunger Games. I want to go on and reread the original series now. There were times I didn’t want to put it down. I definitely recommend it if you liked the original series.

Reasons Why I Love YA

By Brookelorren on May 19, 2020May 18, 202036 Comments

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Every week, we get to talk about a different book topic. Today’s topic is “Reasons Why I Love _____.” There will be much love shared this week, I’m sure. Rather than gush over one of my auto-buy authors (which I do all the time anyway), I’m going to talk about why I love YA in the first place.

1. It’s full of adventure. Sometimes I hear (usually 20-something) people say how they want more protagonists their age. I don’t particularly want to read about protagonists my age. Sorry. Not that older protagonists might do something interesting, but I really can’t imagine waking up one day and leaving my kids to go save the kingdom.

2. First loves. My life in high school was pretty pathetic. All the boys liked other girls and wouldn’t be interested in me if I paid them. It was pretty depressing. In YA, I get to walk in the shoes of someone else who (probably) had a better time than I did.

3. Books I can share with my kids. My kids have read many of the same books I have. Although my boy likes to read middle grade books sometimes, he’s also read most of Marie Lu’s books. After listening to most of Astrid Scholte’s The Vanishing Deep together in the car (we still haven’t finished it because that was our car book and we don’t go places together right now because of coronavirus), he found Four Dead Queens on his Kindle and started reading it. After things get back to normal and we finish The Vanishing Deep, I’m going to make him listen to City of Bones with me in the car, because he started it, but I don’t think he actually gave it a chance.

4. Book experiences I can share with my kids. About a year ago, my boy had finished Legend and I asked him if he’d go meet Marie Lu with me at the Tattered Cover if she ever went there. He said he would, and asked if we could go to the Lego Store while we’re there. I agreed. In March, she came to The Tattered Cover with Astrid Scholte and Melissa de la Cruz, and we had an amazing day together. We got cupcakes, went to the Lego Store, had dinner, and then got front row seats at the bookstore. It was an all-day event and was great.

5. It’s a family tradition. My grandma shared the Anne of Green Gables books with me when I was in middle or high school. I ended up inheriting those books from her.

6. Why grow up? Along the same lines, my grandma played with dolls in her 80s. You can like whatever you like, no matter what your age. I read other books too, but there’s no expiration date on liking things.

7. The category is quite diverse. I know YA is often considered a genre, but it’s actually more of a category, and it’s fairly diverse. There’s fantasy books with dragons, contemporaries with people graduating from high school, and futuristic dystopians with teens fighting tyrannical governments. It covers every kind of topic under the sun, from bullying to evil tyrants trying to take over the world. There’s always something to grab my interest.

8. The book community. YA is a book category that people of (almost) all ages can enjoy. I can go to a book signing with my boy or buy the Legend trilogy for my niece and then have her tell me she loved the books I bought. The age ranges of people on Twitter vary also. And many people over here at Top Ten Tuesday also like YA.

9. Hopeful stories. A lot of YA stories are hopeful. The good guys usually win. People usually look for a brighter tomorrow. This isn’t always the case, but a lot of the time it is.

10. I’m not old enough for adult books (sometimes). I’ve often said I’m not old enough to watch Game of Thrones. While technically, yes, I am old enough to read any book in the bookstore, there are some books I don’t want to read. I believe books influence your mind, and most YA books are positive, family friendly influences.

Those are some reasons why I love YA. What did you write about today? Next week we’re going to talk about opening lines. I’ll write about some that I really love. See you then!

Last 10 Series I Haven’t Finished (Yet)

By Brookelorren on May 12, 2020May 12, 202019 Comments

Hello! Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl)! Here’s where we talk about books every week. Today’s topic is supposed to be “The Last Ten Books I Abandoned,” but I really don’t try to abandon books, so I’m going to go with something similar, but different: the last 10 series I haven’t finished. It could be for a variety of reasons, and I’ll tell you why I haven’t finished them yet. Let’s get started!

Chosen Ones – Veronica Roth

Length: Duology

Why haven’t I finished it?: The second book isn’t out yet! It doesn’t even have a title. But I have every intention of reading it once it comes out.

System Divine: Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell

Length: Trilogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: The third book isn’t out yet! It’s title hasn’t been announced yet, although the authors know what the title is. The third book hasn’t even been announced on Goodreads, but I went to a book event with the authors and I know they were going to do one.

The Last Hours: Cassandra Clare

Length: Trilogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: Only the first book is available. I’m so looking forward to reading more of this series. I keep looking to see if Chain of Iron is available to pre-order. I might reread this twice before the next book comes out, I love it so much.

St. Rosetta’s Academy: Sandhya Menon

Length: Trilogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: The second two books aren’t out yet! I sound like a broken record at this point. But there are other reasons why I haven’t finished a series, just not the last books I’ve read up to this point.

Dollar: Pepper Winters

Length: Pentalogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: Just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve read four of the five books so far. I’ve put the fifth book, Millions, onto my TBR lottery, but it hasn’t won so far. Plus, I’m having trouble getting books read right now. Don’t know why.

Camelot Rising: Kiersten White

Length: Trilogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: The other two books in the series aren’t available yet. I do plan on reading them though.

Sea Witch: Sarah Henning

Length: Duology

Why haven’t I finished it?: So many books, so little time. Maybe I’ll read the sequel someday? I’m a never say never kind of person. But it’s not one of my top priorities.

Dreamer Trilogy: Maggie Stiefvater

Length: Trilogy

Why haven’t I finished it?: The other books aren’t out yet. I don’t think I liked this book quite as much as The Raven Boys, so I probably won’t pre-order it, but I’ll probably get the other books from the library and read them.

Monsters of Verity: Victoria Schwab

Length: Duology

Why haven’t I finished it?: I haven’t gotten around to it. It’s in my TBR lottery, so I intend to read the finale at some point; I just haven’t yet.

The Beautiful: Renée Ahdieh

Length: Duology

Why haven’t I finished it?: The Damned isn’t out yet. Like Call Down the Hawk, I’m not sure I liked the first book enough to buy the second book, but I’ll probably get it from the library.

So there are the last 10 series that I’ve read partway through and haven’t finished. So far this year, I’ve finished four series, and this list goes back to mid-October of last year, so I guess I tend to finish most series that I read. Not all of them, but many of them.

Next week is “Reasons Why I Love…” I think I’ll write about “Reasons Why I Love YA.” But don’t quote me on it. See you then!

The Summer of Impossibilities

By Brookelorren on April 28, 2020April 28, 20203 Comments

Don’t you just love summer? It’s almost the end of April, school is starting to wind down, and it’s almost time to break out those summer books! I recently read The Summer of Impossibilities by Rachael Allen (thank you Netgalley and ABRAMS Kids for the Advanced Reader Copy!), and think this will make a lovely summer book. It deals with a lot of things that teens struggle with, and cumulates with beautiful friendships.

The Characters

One of the things that stands out to me in this book is the characters. Their situations are all different, but many teens will find someone they resonate with.

Skyler – She loves playing softball, but suffers from juvenile arthritis. She’s afraid to tell her parents that she’s in pain. They have so many expectations for her–plus, they’re having some problems of her own.

Scarlett – Sky’s twin sister, she’s having some problems of her own. She’s not sure how to deal with her boyfriend. She’s also recovering from cutting, and at times feels like she’s broken.

Amelia Grace – She likes girls, but she also wants to be a youth pastor. When she’s accidentally outed, her church doesn’t want to allow her to be a youth pastor anymore. Amelia has to figure out if there’s any way to be the person she wants to be without giving up part of who she is.

Ellie – Ellie has been homeschooled for most of her life and has difficulty making friends.

The Story

These girls’ parents were best friends as teens and started the Southern Belles’ Drinking Club (SBDC) when they were teenagers. When Sky and Scarlett’s parents are having difficulties, they call up their old friends and spend the summer at their lake house together. The girls know about each other, but haven’t seen each other in years. They end up starting their own SBDC (drinking is optional: Ellie is a Muslim) and make a pact to do something impossible over the summer. Each girl’s impossible thing has something to do with their struggles.

Conclusion

The Summer of Impossibilities is such a sweet friendship story, and is perfect for summer reading. Do the girls all achieve the impossible? Well, I’m not going to give away the ending, but I will say the girls like how their summer resolves and grow as people in the process.

The main down side to this book was that the characters tended to have similar voices. Sometimes I’d have to flip back to tell who’s POV the story was coming from, or I’d tell which character was speaking by their unique situation. The story is told from four points of view, which can be incredibly difficult to write, especially when you’re writing characters of the same gender and age (I’ve written a story with 3 POVs before, and it helped that they were either different genders or ages). However, POV issues aside, it was a lovely book I think will make a great summer read.