A&L Do Summer By: Jan Blazanin

Title: A & L Do Summer
Author: Jan Blazanin
PAPERBACK
Amount of Pages: 288
Release Date: May 10, 2011
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Geared Towards: Teens
From: Publisher (ARC)

"'This is my first summer in Cottonwood Creek and our last summer in high school. We're going to soar from the depths of anonymity to the peak of notoriety. By September, Aspen Parks and Laurel Piedmont will own this town.'"

Summary (From B.O.B): After a year in rural Cottonwood Creek, Iowa, city girl Laurel is still adjusting to a place where parties take place in barns, guys ride around in pickup tracks, and a killer senior prank involves getting pigs into the principal's office. Fortunately, she has her best friend Aspen on her side. The real problem is that neither the country girl nor the city slicker have boyfriends, nor any prospects for getting them. Clearly, they need to raise their profiles-and they have a summer to do it.

Wdebo's Review: [Note: I read this book a while back so my review might not be exactly what I thought when I first finished the story.] Looking at the summary, the first impression you get is that this is a story with Laurel as the main charcter, so when I first started the novel, that is exactly what I thought and I was very surprised when I realized that the story was from Aspen's point of view. In the beginning, I felt that Aspen was too childish for my taste, but the childish aspect of her personality gave me a comforting feeling and reminded me of the books I read in middle school. (A point I will touch on later). Later, Aspen seems to grow up some and she adopts a fun, calming tone of voice.

Aspen has a very sarcastic tone of voice that in the beginning which took a bit for me to get used to and enjoy but after the story progressed I enjoyed it more and more. Like I stated in the beginning, there was a middle-schoolish flair to the story. There was a childish fun to voice and the story itself; however, at times it felt strange because there was that feeling to the story and yet they were talking about more "older" subject matter like sex or stuff along that lines. So I would be reading and feel like I was a middle schooler reading my middle schooler books and all of a sudden I would hit one of those moments and I would be confused for a bit before I realized just what type of story I was reading.

The incidents in the story were very amusing and fun to read about even though I groaned everytime Aspen got herself into a situation where it was so obvious that nothing good was going to come out of it.

I liked Aspen's character but I was not a big fan of any of the other characters I felt them to be too annoying and hard to like.

Cafe Cover Chat: I'm not the biggest fan of the cover but it does add to the whole middle school flair that I was thinking about. But I do like the little heart in the corner, it's cute. (B-)

All in all, a great summer read that is light-hearted and enjoyable that gives a sort of middle grade feel to a YA novel.

Grade: B

Wdebo :)