Review: Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland

For Cricket Thompson, a summer like this one will change everything. A summer spent on Nantucket with her best friend, Jules Clayton, and the indomitable Clayton family. A summer when she’ll make the almost unattainable Jay Logan hers. A summer to surpass all dreams.

Some of this turns out to be true. Some of it doesn’t.

When Jules and her family suffer a devastating tragedy that forces the girls apart, Jules becomes a stranger whom Cricket wonders whether she ever really knew. And instead of lying on the beach working on her caramel-colored tan, Cricket is making beds and cleaning bathrooms to support herself in paradise for the summer.

But it’s the things Cricket hadn’t counted on--most of all, falling hard for someone who should be completely off-limits--that turn her dreams into an exhilarating, bittersweet reality.

A beautiful future is within her grasp, and Cricket must find the grace to embrace it. If she does, her life could be the perfect shade of Nantucket blue.

My Review:

I read Nantucket Blue while I was on a vacation to the beach, and this book is the perfect vacation read.  I actually bought it the week of its release back in May, but I saved it for a vacation read.  The story is enjoyable and engaging, and the characters and romance are well-developed.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Part of this book focuses on Cricket finding herself without Jules by her side.  She has been best friends with Jules for four years, but the death of Jules' mom changes Jules.  She becomes less of a friend to Cricket.  She copes with her mother's death by shutting everyone else out of her life.  Cricket realizes that Jules is no longer the friend that she had known before.  Cricket learns to be independent in this book by living on Nantucket by herself.  She's not with her mother, and she doesn't have Jules.  She learns a lot because of this one summer.

The romance in this book is very sweet.  It is between Cricket and a guy that she thinks she should never get involved with because he is Jules' younger brother.  Zack is two grades below Cricket in school.  Their relationship remains a secret for a while because they believe that Jules will be mad if she finds out about it.  Zack is awesome and a very sweet guy.  I liked how he really wanted to take Cricket out on some good dates.  He doesn't think that their age difference really matters, since it is only a couple years.

Cricket makes some good new friends in this book.  One of these people is Liz, her coworker at the Cranberry Inn.  Cricket and Liz are in charge of cleaning the rooms when people leave.  They do lots of different things around the inn.  Liz really wants Cricket to find a guy during the summer.  There is also a man named Gavin who runs the inn.  He ends up friends with Cricket as well.  Cricket starts an internship for a journalist named George Gust who is at the inn while she is working there.  They grow to be friends, and he tells her that she could even have a future in journalism.  

If you like YA contemporary, read this book.

Katie