Blog Tour: Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland (Review + Giveaway)

Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland Blog Tour

Genre: YA contemporary romance
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Publication Date: May 7th 2013

eARC was provided by the publisher for the blog tour. Thank you so much!!!

Goodreads || Amazon

For Cricket Thompson, a summer like this one will change everything. A summer spent on Nantucket with her best friend, Jules Clayton, and the indomitable Clayton family. A summer when she’ll make the almost unattainable Jay Logan hers. A summer to surpass all dreams.

Some of this turns out to be true. Some of it doesn’t.

When Jules and her family suffer a devastating tragedy that forces the girls apart, Jules becomes a stranger whom Cricket wonders whether she ever really knew. And instead of lying
on the beach working on her caramel-colored tan, Cricket is making beds and cleaning bathrooms to support herself in paradise for the summer. But it’s the things Cricket hadn’t counted on--most of all, falling hard for someone who should be completely off-limits--that turn her dreams into an exhilarating, bittersweet reality.

A beautiful future is within her grasp, and Cricket must find the grace to embrace it. If she does, her life could be the perfect shade of Nantucket blue.

My Thoughts:

From the first moment I saw this beautiful cover I knew I'm going to enjoy this book. I'm currently obsessed with YA summer romance and this book looked like a cute, fun, summer-spirited romantic story. I am always happy to read books that are exactly in my comfort zone.

This book tells the story of Cricket Thompson in the summer vacation before her senior year. Cricket was sure this is going to be the summer of her life. She was supposed to join her best friend's family for the summer vacation in Nantucket. There she will spend her summer in her bikini with her best friend Jules and her crush Jay. But things didn't go as she planned when Jules's family is going through a devastating tragedy and Cricket is no longer invited to spend the summer with them.

Cricket decides to finds a job in Nantucket just to be there for her friend, only to find out the Jules hates her and refuses to speak to her. Alone and isolated, Cricket has to manage on her own. 

Why is Jules so angry? Can Cricket make it up to her? Will she make Jay fall in love with her as she planned?

So first I'll say that this book not only didn't disappoint me, but it has managed to EXCEED my highest expectations!! I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of this story and how it was so much better than all those typical beach novels.

Cricket was so realistic and easy-to-relate-to. It's been a long time since I read a book that I could actually identify with everything the main character thought and did. I understood her so well that I felt as if I WAS her, as if I was actually there in the Nantucket island, talking and hanging out with the other characters.  It was just terrific. I literally couldn't put the book down!! I finished it in one day, which is a huge accomplishment for me since I'm a super-slow reader...

What I liked even more about this book was the emotions. Cricket was painfully sincere and described everything she felt. I laughed out loud with her when she was happy and cried when she was upset or desperate. I even fell in love together with her. I can't tell you who she ended up with because that'd be a huge spoiler, so I'll only say that I just loved him. I can't believe he's not real. I'm in love with a fictional character again. Sigh.

Wow, it's really hard to talk about this book without spoiling anything because it was all full of twists and surprises. It's really an unusual thing when it comes to YA contemporary romance and it made this book even better. Cricket found out many things about Nantucket, about her parents, about her friends and about life in general. I could see her growing up and becoming an adult, a very good and caring one who understood the world around her and was ready to help whenever she could.

One more thing I just loved about this book were the supporting characters. They were all realistic and well built. I liked how they weren't black or white, good or evil. This only made the characters more realistic, because in real life people have both good and bad inside them. For example, her so-called BFF Jules wasn't entirely mean. As much as I wanted to hate her, I just couldn't because I knew that she was going through a lot and that she used to be good.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, teens and adults alike. I'm sure that everyone will find a part of himself in the character of Cricket and will find himself identifying with her. This was good as a light beach read, but also as a "serious" novel about family, love and friendship.

Rating:

Giveaway:

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