News
Check out Sarah Ockler's interview posted over here on the blogspot blog yesterday! Also, there's still time to enter the contest for an ARC of Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler that was posted just the other day here on Myspace- just check the blog entry below this one.


Reviews
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
"Don't worry, Anna. I'll tell her, okay? Just let me think about the best way to do it."
"Okay."
"Promise me? Promise you won't say anything?"
"Don't worry." I laughed. "It's our secret, right?"

According to her best friend Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy ever day, there's a pretty good chance Anna will find her first summer romance. Anna lightheartedly agrees to the game, but there's something she hasn't told Frankie---she's already had that kind of romance, and it was with Frankie's older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death one year ago.

Ockler's debut is full of what makes a great summer read: humor, a seaside city, boys, and friendship, but also some deeper exploration of the emotions of loving and losing someone, and how to move on from it. It's a quick, compelling read and she does a great job of balancing the light and serious sides. Anna and Frankie's adventures throughout these few weeks shown in California are fun to read about and it shows how good these two are together. So when the climax occurs and there's a huge argument between them, it's extremely difficult to read about because, for me at least, I felt like I was Anna and I was the one being yelled at. That's the mark of a great writer- to make the reader feel like they're really there in the novel, in the character's head. I really loved the romance in this book and the back-and-forth that Anna felt about it; Ockler explored that angle extremely well. This book is a fantastic way to start off your summer reading.


Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog
Morgan Sparks has always known that she and her boyfriend, Cam, are made for each other. But when Cam’s cousin Pip comes to stay with the family, Cam seems depressed. Finally Cam confesses to Morgan what’s going on: Cam is a fairy. The night he was born, fairies came down and switched him with a healthy human boy. Nobody expected Cam to live, and nobody expected his biological brother, heir to the fairy throne, to die. But both things happened, and now the fairies want Cam back to take his rightful place as Fairy King. Even as Cam physically changes, becoming more miserable each day, he and Morgan pledge to fool the fairies and stay together forever. But by the time Cam has to decide once and for all what to do, Morgan’s no longer sure what’s best for everyone, or whether her and Cam’s love can weather an uncertain future.

I really enjoyed this book; it was a quick and extremely interesting read. Balog has a great take on fairies and love triangles (or maybe square is the right term for this? I don't know.). The plot had some great twists and turns, and the ending was done well, bittersweet, realistic, and just right for the storyline. Morgan is a fun, sarcastic character with some great depth to her. The same can be said for a lot of the other characters here; Balog does a wonderful job of creating all these characters and making them unique and be crucial to the various parts of the storyline. It was really interesting reading about a guy becoming a fairy rather than a girl because it opened up some great topics for her to explore with Cam's character. This was a great book, and I can't wait to read more from Balog in the future!

Both books are available at bookstores everywhere now, or can be ordered on Amazon: Twenty Boy Summer and Fairy Tale