summer

Jennifer Echols

Here’s a great summer reads author for you guys: Jennifer Echols! 
Echols’ books are romantic dramas with a sense of humor – she’s so good at writing a developing romantic relationship between two characters that you’ll feel like you’re there with them. The three pictured here, Forget You, Going Too Far, and Love Story, were the first books I read this summer… and I went through them all in about three days.
For content reasons, I’d recommend these to teens in their upper high school through college years. I’m pretty conservative with my recommendations, I know, but that’s just me. Overall, the stories here are engaging and I loved watching each romance spark and ignite. 
Echols has a new title, Dirty Little Secret, coming out in July. I’m looking forward to it!
Enjoy. :)

This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

Here’s my confession: I have a HUGE crush on this book. In fact, I’ll tell you what happy looks like – my face when I’m reading Jennifer E. Smith’s sweet, funny, and cleverly written exchanges between Graham Larkin and Ellie O’Neill.
In this story, a simple mistake in typing an e-mail address leads to a correspondence between two teenagers from opposite sides of the country. The teenagers don’t know much of anything about each other, and yet it’s that anonymity through e-mail with a stranger that allows them to open up to each other about things they’d never tell anyone they actually knew. What results is a conversation of thoughts and feelings in the moment – things they can’t say out loud but can say to each other. This ranges from seemingly insignificant observations about the annoyingness of smiley faces used in e-mails (J) to the soul-searching question of what happiness looks like.
Each still holds an important secret, though.
Graham Larkin is a teen heartthrob movie star, trapped in a world of paparazzi and feeling like nobody really wants to be around him for him, but only for his looks and his fame. In his correspondence with Ellie, he gets to be himself and get to know her without the trappings of fame. He’s just a witty, smart, normal guy who’s falling for a girl he’s never met.
Ellie O’Neill is a seemingly typical small town girl, but she and her mom have changed their names to keep a scandalous past hidden. Ellie is the only child of a single mom, and life gets lonely even with her friends to keep her company. This anonymous pen pal deal is exactly what she needs – a guy she can be honest with and dream about.
Only, what if it doesn’t have to be a dream anymore? When Ellie lets her town’s name slip, Graham starts pulling strings and gets the location for his next movie shoot changed… to Ellie’s small coastal town. Sounds like every girl’s dream – what teenage girl doesn’t want the teen magazine centerfold showing up on her doorstep, ready to sweep her off her feet? For Ellie, though, Graham’s fame and constant media attention complicate and change everything.
Watching these two characters navigate the challenges they each face as they explore the possibilities the future holds is great summer fun. The characters are great to spend some time with, the writing is full of smart romance and beautiful description, and the story holds enough excitement to keep us all daydreaming about our teenaged selves opening the door to find our adolescent celebrity man-crush there, declaring his love for us. All in all, I highly recommend you check out This Is What Happy Looks Like… and soon!

The Summer I Turned Pretty

As the weather turns cold and we’re all starting to wish summer would hurry up and roll around again, I find myself recalling events, settings, and characters from this trilogy of Summer books by author Jenny Han. They’re so much fun and full of sweet, romantic longing. As far as content (language and sexual) goes, I think they’re fine for 7th grade and up.
Belly, the protagonist, is pretty self absorbed and her self confidence is horrid, but I identify with that… Don’t all of us struggle with those things some? I’m not really a fan of characters that have their acts together more than I do. Anyway, I liked Belly, and I liked the other characters. I’d love to spend time with them all in real life, which is how I know an author has really made characters believable and honest and real. I loved the setting and am thoroughly jealous of people who get to spend entire summers at the beach like that. The only thing I didn’t like was that it ended. And, if it had to end, it could have at least ended with a freakin kiss. The rest of the trilogy doesn’t dissapoint in the romance department, though – if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to escape to a different place for the summers and experience having your choice between two boys (and what girl hasn’t?) then you’ll love these books.
Han has recently been working on a new trilogy beginning with Burn For Burn, which just came out this summer. It was great. I was a little disappointed in the end because it was a HUGE cliffhanger that left me wishing I had just waited until all three were published before starting. If you don’t mind cliffhangers, though, you should definitely check out Burn For Burn. Like, now.
Enjoy!