I am finally back from New York City! I had a blast, saw a lot of great colleges, narrowed my top three choices down to Vassar, Columbia, and NYU, and met loads of great people! There will be tons of posts coming all this next week about my trip, and I am excited to share a lot of that with you.
One of the many people I met while in NYC was Aimee Friedman, YA author and editor at Scholastic. I saw her at Teen Read Night on Wednesday, where she read from her latest book Sea Change and answered a few questions. I read Sea Change on my way to NYC, and it is fabulous!
Sea Change
Miranda is a practical, driven teen looking forward to spending her summer interning at the Museum of Natural History. But when her estranged grandmother dies, she and her mother travel to Selkie Island instead, a small island off the coast of Georgia that is home to her grandmother's favorite vacation home, which she left to Miranda's mother. There, Miranda finds the island full of legend and lore, frivolous girls and lazy beach days. She feels out of place, yet when she meets Leo, strangely at home. But Leo and Selkie Island both possess secrets that Miranda will have a hard time wrapping her head around...
Sea Change has all the makings of a perfect summer read: an idyllic, wonderfully descriptive location, a lush romance, and plenty of secrets to keep the reader turning pages. The exposition of the novel is slightly bumpy, but the rest of the book flows quite smoothly as Miranda discovers that there's more to her family and the island than she anticipated. The more mystical elements of the book are well developed and placed just right throughout the book, making it a mysterious and intriguing read. The best thing about Sea Change is that it is not just about romance or Miranda and Leo’s relationship; it's a book of discovery as Miranda learns the truth about her family, grapples with class distinctions and doing what is right, and learns to open up her mind to new and sometimes scary ideas. Because Miranda and Leo don’t really get very serious in their relationship, Friedman’s open but optimistic ending is easier to accept and quite fitting.
Sea Change has just a touch of enchantment in it, and plenty of real life situations and issues that everyone faces at one time or another, making it an ideal and wonderfully captivating summer read that leaves you with high hopes for another summer (and sequel).
Cover Comments: This cover is so divine! The colors are perfect for the ocean setting, and the intimate (yet chaste) position of the models is very alluring and romantic. The added details of the swirls on the sides make this cover look very soft as well. This is definitely a romantic, appealing cover, but certainly not in a trashy or cheap way. I love it!
(And P.S., Aimee mentioned something about a sequel on Wednesday. I was the one in the audience clapping my hands saying, "Yay!!")
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3 comments:
Wow. You've convinced me to track this one down!
THANK YOU for mentioning that a sequel is in the works! I love this book and burned through it in one day.
THANK YOU for noting a sequel! I love this book by Aimee Friedman and read it in one day. She can do quite a bit with character and story development for a sequel.
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