Review: "Bittersweet"

Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler
3 out of 5 stars

Can a Summer Romance Formula book be set in the dead of winter? Just substitute snow for sunshine, parkas for bikinis, and freeze the large body of water and you've got Bittersweet. :) This book was decent, maybe not quite as good as Twenty Boy Summer (I like that they have similar covers), but I enjoyed it.

Hudson is a 16 year old girl living in upstate New York (I think, very close to the Canada border) with her mom and younger brother, Bug. Her dad left them 4 years before, leading Hudson to quit her promising figure skating career. Now she's working in her mom's diner, baking cupcakes. Oh man, the cupcakes. Each chapter is titled with a new cupcake recipe, such as "vanilla cupcakes topped with whipped peanut butter cream cheese icing, milk chocolate chips, crushed pretzels, and a drizzle of warm caramel." Trust me, you are going to want cupcakes after reading this book! My stomach is actually growling as I'm writing this review lol. If you are lucky enough to have a Sprinkles store nearby, I say go there before starting this book!

(Mini red velvet cupcakes on top of their 

handmade ice cream. Neeeeed!!)

Hudson is great at the cupcake biz, but her real passion (she thinks) is still figure skating. She starts going to a local lake on her breaks and skating again. She has to hide it from her mom though, because skating was her dad's thing with her and she has a lot of guilt over it sort of breaking up her parents' marriage. While skating one day, she (literally) runs into cute hockey player Josh and somehow agrees to help him with his skating, which turns into helping the entire hockey team. There is a bit of a love triangle between Josh and fellow hockey captain, Will. Ockler kind of set it up so that Hudson could fall for either boy, which was a little odd. Almost like she maybe wanted to do a sequel, but didn't/couldn't? I won't spoil it, but there is the appropriate amount of crushing and swooning here. :)

No matter what happens next, I'm not letting this turn into another two weeks of silence, the entire history of us summed up in a series of near misses and almosts just because neither of us had the snowballs to say anything.

Hudson's relationship with her mom was one of my least favorite parts of the book, while the interactions with her brother were some of my favorite parts. Mom's dream was to own a diner and she's doing it, but barely. It's not Hudson's dream though. She seems very oblivious to what's going on in her teenage daughter's life, aside from the impact it has on the diner. She expects Hudson to do the cupcake biz and waitress when they have to cut back on expenses and also basically help raise Bug, all while going to school still. Bug, on the other hand, is adorable. Eight years old and a little precocious, he likes to investigate the mail for suspicious powders and figure out the logistics of how Santa could get to all the houses in one night.

When Hudson gets a chance to reinvent herself in the skating world, she decides to take it. Even though it means lying to her mom, flaking out on her brother and best friend Dani, letting her grades slip, and generally making a mess of things. Honestly, she is not an easy person to like. The whole book kind of reminds me of a younger version of the 90s movie, The Cutting Edge. (Great movie, if you haven't seen it. The toe pick scene is my favorite!) Hudson has to decide if skating is really what she wants to do or if she's maybe just fooling herself. And how is her mom going to react when she finds out? (I'm sure you can guess.) Overall, a decent book that leaves you wanting cupcakes and hot chocolate (even though it's 90 degrees here!)

Review: "Twenty Boy Summer"

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
4 out of 5 stars

How pretty is this cover? I thought the heart was made of scraps of paper at first, but it's actually sea glass (which makes more sense duh) and it's just so simple compared to all those ones with skinny girls in giant, poofy dresses running from nothing. But it works. I wasn't expecting so many feelings with this book. When I started it, I thought I was getting a light and fluffy summer book about two girls flirting with a bunch of boys. Instead I got a heartbreaking story about falling in love and losing that love in an instant and how to come back from that. This was really a good book, but it should come with a warning: "do not read in public, for you will probably ugly cry". And how do I know this? Because I read it at work. And I know what you're thinking...didn't it mention the sad bit on the back of the book? Well yeah, but apparently I didn't pay attention or already forgot because I was pretty shocked when it happened.

Anna has lived all her life next door to brother & sister, Matt & Frankie. She is best friends with Frankie and has been in love with Matt (two years older than the girls) since she was ten. She's been keeping this a secret for the last 5 years, but on her 15th birthday, things suddenly change...Matt kisses her. Anna is overjoyed to find that he has the same feelings she does but they are worried about what Frankie will think. They decide that Matt has to be the one to tell her, in a few weeks on their summer vacation to California. Anna agrees but is also conflicted about keeping this secret.

The thought of keeping something so important, so intense, so unbelievable from my best friend for even one more day almost killed me. Never before in our shared history did I hide so much as a passing crush-she knew everything. She'd been there for every tragedy, every celebration, every embarrassing moment.

And then the unthinkable happens. Matt dies, the girls are devastated and Anna has this huge secret. She decides she can never tell Frankie, that she is doing this to protect her, that she won't appreciate or understand. And a year passes. The girls and their families are trying their hardest to move on, but the cracks are showing. Frankie is a bit of a party girl, Anna doesn't bother trying to get any boy's attention, but continues to do her best to protect Frankie for Matt. Anna goes on summer vacation with Frankie and her parents and they all try to act like it's okay and things are moving forward.

Sometimes I think we all feel guilty for being happy, and as soon as we catch ourselves acting like everything is okay, someone remembers it's not.

Frankie decides to make it her mission to help Anna get some "experience" and comes up with her Twenty Boy Summer plan. Anna goes along, for Frankie, but can't even fathom a time when she can forget Matt long enough to like another boy. The grief in this book grips you but there are also moments of joy. Anna's love for Frankie is beautiful, she will do anything to make her happy, even sacrificing her own happiness. Ockler's descriptions of the ocean and the beach made me ache to be there, digging my toes into the warm sand, feeling the ocean spraying my face, and the sun beating down on my shoulders. And also scouting out boys. :)

Somewhere along the seashore, a strange wind blows over the ocean, and twenty oblivious boys simultaneously look up from their surfboards.

Of course, there are boys boys boys. Maybe not quite twenty, but plenty to keep the girls occupied. Some are gross, icky boys with only one thing on their mind and some are wonderful, understanding, cute boys that turn out to be perfect for healing hearts. I wasn't crazy about all the sneaking around they did to get to these boys, but then I would have done the same thing at their age. And on the flip-side, I wasn't crazy about how oblivious Frankie's parents were to her pain and scheming, but I'm sure it's normal too. On the surface, Frankie is all about the Plan but you can tell underneath that she's just a hurt little girl. And it's those moments that really make the friendship between the two girls so real. And the betrayal that happens towards the end of their trip so awful. I can imagine how I would feel at that age if (SPOILER): someone had read my journal and I just cringe in sympathy. This book has really helped me find my love for contemporary romances again...I was in kind of a rut and now I just want to devour them all. :) 

Every story is part of a whole, entire life, you know? Happy and sad and tragic and whatever, but an entire life. And books let you know them.