Age Group: Teen
Genre: Young Adult/Romance
Release Date: July 25, 2011
Buy Links:
Amazon ♥ Book Depository
Book Description:
While other high school seniors are dreaming about their futures, Sophie and Carter are just trying to make it through each day. Carter is overwhelmed by issues at home as he struggles to support his mother. Meanwhile, next door neighbor Sophie is left to care for her three younger siblings in place of their absent and troubled mother. All that holds these two best friends together is each other, and knowing that each night they'll sit together on Sophie's front porch swing and escape from reality, if just for awhile. But as their relationship reaches a turning point and high school graduation nears, will their friendship become something more?
This book isn’t a novel, but a novella (which just means it’s not novel-length). That doesn’t, however, mean it’s not every bit as good and page-turning as a novel-length book. I hadn’t read anything by Chelsea Fine before, but this one came up for grabs as an Amazon freebie a couple weeks ago, and considering I’m addicted to reading YA books lately, I couldn’t pass it up. I flew through this one in about three hours and it left me wanting more.
Sophie and Carter don’t interact at school, though they’re neighbors and best friends. They’ve managed to create this little world at night, on Sophie’s front porch swing, that is all their own. Both of them come from traumatic backgrounds; Sophie’s mother is a prostitute, and she has been left to her own devices to raise her three younger siblings, and Carter’s father was abusive until the day Carter stood up to him and scared him away, leaving Carter the man of the house, and forcing him to be the one to deal with his mother’s severe mental health issues.
The bond between Sophie and Carter grows because they’re always there for one another, helping each other with home-life obstacles that come up frequently, and offering each other support when the other needs it most. As always, I won’t tell you how it ends, but you won’t be disappointed. I’m excited because I just learned that Ms. Fine is writing a sequel to this, and I can hardly wait to read it. I hope you’ll enjoy these characters as much as I did.
I grew up (and still live) in the Phoenix, AZ area where I studied Design at Arizona State University. During college, I also took my first creative writing class, which is how I fell in love with writing. In 2007, I found myself working at a credit union and bored out of my mind. I promptly opened up Word and began writing a story...to kill time. (I know, I'm a terrible employee.) But eight pages and forty-five minutes later, I realized I was actually having fun. Years later, (after I quit the credit union and became a self-employed artist...because let's face it, I was no good at "being on the clock" what, with all the story-writing during "work" hours) I asked a publishing company to edit a short story of mine and before I knew it, I was on the road to publishing my first book, Sophie & Carter. Now I spend most of my days writing, painting, and trying not to burn the house down when I cook.
Other than that, I'm an avid reader, a lover of music, a Battlestar Galactica fan, a coffee addict, a chronic texter, an obsessive teeth-brusher, and a shameless superhero enthusiast. Oh, and I have the best agent in the world, Suzie Townsend of Nancy Coffey Literary!
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