Take It from the Top
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Set at a camp over the course of six summers, this novel dives into the falling-out of two girls from different backgrounds who thought they'd be friends forever...until a production of Wicked brings all their buried issues to the surface. Claire Swinarski, Edgar Award nominee of the ALA Notable What Happened to Rachel Riley?, tackles privilege, perspective, and the power of friendship in this page-turning puzzle that readers will devour.
Eowyn Becker has waited all year to attend her sixth summer at Lamplighter Lake Summer Camp. Here, the pain of her mom’s death can’t reach her, and she gets to reunite with her best friend, Jules Marrigan—the only person in the world who understands her. To top it off, Wicked—the girls' favorite musical—has been chosen for the camp's end-of-year production. If anyone can be Glinda to Eowyn's Elphaba, it's Jules!
But when Eowyn arrives at camp, everything seems wrong. The best-friend reunion Eowyn had been dreaming of doesn’t go as planned. Jules will barely even look at Eowyn, let alone talk to her, and Eowyn has no idea why.
Well, maybe she does…
There are two sides to every story, and if you want to understand this one, you’ll need to hear both. Told in a series of alternating chapters that dip back to past summers, the girls’ story will soon reveal how Eowyn and Jules went from being best friends to fierce foils. Can they mend ways before the curtains close on what was supposed to be the best summer of their lives?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eowyn Becker lives for theater summer camp, where she can follow in her deceased stage star mother's footsteps and finally hang out with her long-distance best friend Jules. The northern Wisconsin camp also provides welcome relief from the stress of her Broadway star older brother's career and her distracted, grieving father. As 13-year-olds, Eowyn and Jules get to participate in the musical production at the end of the summer, and as the camp's best singer, Eowyn is gunning for a leading role, despite her stage fright that's been getting worse. And Jules has seemed distant lately, even cold. Eowyn doesn't understand why but worries that it's because of a disastrous incident during last year's show. When the two are cast as leads in Wicked, Eowyn hopes that working together will help mend their friendship, but the rift only deepens. The vibrant and exceptionally rendered setting makes for a compelling backdrop against which layered character building unravels. Swinarski (What Happened to Rachel Riley?) intersperses Eowyn's conversational narration—suffused with theater-obsessed sensibilities—with sympathetic third person chapters that cover the events of previous summers, offering context and history to the white-cued girls' relationship. Ages 8–12.
