Sweethearts

SWEETHEARTS: Sara Zarr: Little, Brown: Young Adult: 217 pages

Jennifer and Cameron are elementary school outcasts and best friends. At age nine, Cameron disappears and Jennifer believes he’s dead. Eight years later, Jennifer has transformed herself into Jenna, beautiful and popular and full of self-doubt that begins to spiral out of control when Cameron suddenly reappears in her life, asking her to return to a scene of abuse from their childhood. This is an interesting character study that nicely examines school and family dynamics without necessarily providing a resolution that ties everything up with a definite ending and lesson learned. Instead, readers are given a thought-provoking snapshot of a teen life.

MBC