Thursday, May 8, 2014

"Summer State of Mind"

Jen Calonita would never have fought her parents on going to sleepaway camp. She did, however, try to get out of a school camping trip for fear of spiders crawling into her sleeping bag. When she isn't writing, the author of the Secrets of My Hollywood Life and the Belles series can be found at the beach or floating in the pool.

Calonita applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Summer State of Mind, and reported the following:
"You might be used to getting your way back home, Harper McAllister, but that is not how things work at Whispering Pines." -- Ethan Thompson

I was so relieved when I saw this quote on page 69 because it sums up my character Harper's whole experience at camp. Harper is a total girly girl who has gotten a little too comfortable with the finer things in life ever since her family came into money. She cannot function without her Starbucks or her industrial strength flat iron. She lives for weekly manicures. She hates anything outdoorsy unless it's her cabana at the beach on Long Island. Sleepaway camp is completely off her radar and the last thing she'd want to do for the summer and yet, on page 69, here she is. She's obviously forced to attend by her parents, who want her to get a dose of reality, but that doesn't mean Harper is ready to embrace camp life just yet. On page 69, she's in the middle of a zipline challenge and she's not too happy about it. She'd like to helicopter off the zipline if she could, but Ethan, a boy who thinks he has Harper pegged, is not going to let her off the hook that easily. He's a camp "lifer" so to speak. He's gone to camp forever and while Harper may be Ms. Popular back home at their school, Ethan is the guy to know at camp and he's not having any of Harper's whining. But I won't give away what happens at the bottom of that page or the pages that follow. All I'll say is that I think they're funny. If you're looking for a light read this summer, Summer could be exactly what you're looking for.
Visit Jen Calonita's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Jen Calonita and Captain Jack Sparrow.

--Marshal Zeringue