A small American town, a young girl, Ellie and her mum have carved a life out for themselves quite nicely. The weather is glorious, the people friendly but by chance an email arrived to Ellie, it was meant for someone else but it got to Ellie and it started something life changing, a spark of friendship or the start of something more.
Graham was plucked from obscurity and is now the biggest movie star and everyone wants to work with him and all the female fans want to be with him. But Graham is struggling to deal with his fame, and is happy to retreat back into a life where he is virtually unknown.
One summer, as the heat is intense, two people are thrown together but are they being true with each other and are there secrets from the past that will help a future that should be promising and bright to these two young people?
This is a story of young love, friendships which divide and become stronger, about surviving in an unbalanced world where one is unknown and one is known. Add into that world the fact that everyone wants to know everything about everyone else, it is going to be a challenge. Jennifer E Smith, makes every young girls dream come to reality and shows what it might be like if you fell in love with someone famous. She shows the wonderful moments about not being sure whether you have loved or being in love as well as the difficulties of dealing with being in the public eye when your mother has been trying to keep you out of it, because of her own secret.
This is a novel which at first I was not sure of who the pitched audience was went to be? Is this a young adult book? But it goes a bit deeper than that, it is not a pure romance and full of slushy sentiment which it could have been, it is very grown up and I think if I had teenage daughters in particular it would show you how difficult love can be but how also wonderfully simple at the same time.
Well worth a read.
Thank you to the publisher, Headline for sending me this book for review. I would certainly not have picked it up otherwise. This was the book which restored my faith somewhat after starting and stopping two books I could not get into.
The Book Jotter 