Customer Reviews

Sweethearts

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jennifer Harris is able to do what every adolescent girl hopes for--she reinvents herself between middle school and high school from the tubby outcast with a lisp to a beautiful individual with all the right friends. She loses weight, changes her name to Jenna, transfers schools and even gets the perfect boyfriend. But she also has the same fears as every teenage girl--she is afraid that all of the perfect people in her perfect life will see past the skinny exterior and expose her for the fraud she believes she is.

At first glance, this book may seem like a pretty mainstream YA novel about a girl struggling with self-image. But there is so much more depth to Jenna's life, and thanks to the return of her childhood best friend Cameron Quick, Jenna begins to see that she is a lot stronger than she first believes.

Though this novel is about childhood sweethearts and the love that binds them through shared experiences as well as time apart, this is not a teen romance. It is the story of how people help us see who we truly are and that we have the inner strength to face our pasts, no matter how horrific, and live up to a greater future.

While I love Jenna and Cameron, my favorite characters came from some unexpected sources. Alan, Jenna's stepfather, acts as a grounding place for Jenna and becomes the parental figure whom Jenna turns to when she needs someone the most. Jenna's schoolmate Steph is another vibrant character who sees more of the real Jenna than she realizes.

In Jenna, Zarr manages to capture what few young adult authors are able to. Jenna lives on the fringes of teenage life and has always thought of herself as a reactor rather than an initiator, something that the majority of teenagers are but that authors rarely choose to write about. Jenna has also experienced some things that have shaped who she is, but the things she experiences are not on the extremes of the horrific nor are they the "poor me" occurrences of the shallow-minded.

I found this book both relatable and powerful without being over the top or trite. It elicited a lot of emotions that I am still coming to terms with even hours after finishing, and I'm sure I'll still be thinking about it even days from now. With rich characters and a totally new concept, I enjoyed every minute of this book.

When Jennifer was in elementary school, she had only one friend. His name was Cameron, and he meant the world to her. When they were together, the taunts of their classmates didn't matter . . . as much. Jennifer always felt safe with Cameron.

That is, until one day in fifth grade, when something horrible happened to them. Shortly thereafter, he stopped coming to class. Their teacher said he moved; their classmates said something worse. Cameron was gone for good - or so Jennifer thought. On the day she turned seventeen, he walked back into her life. A life very different from the one she used to lead.

In the eight years since her friend's disappearance, Jennifer has changed considerably. She lost weight, gained friends, and started going by Jenna. She attends a small charter school and has her first serious boyfriend, the popular and sweet Ethan. Her once-single mother, who struggled for years to make ends meet, married a kind man. Alan has given Jenna and her mother his last name and a stable home.

Though Jenna has changed on the outside, she's still Jennifer on the inside, filled with insecurities and painful memories, all of which surface the minute she sees Cameron again.

He's grown up too. He's taller now, and his heart is heavier, but he's still Cameron. He's come back in search of closure, something Jenna's new life has never quite given her. Whether or not they find it depends on their willingness to deal with what happened when they were nine years old.

Cameron's reappearance causes Jenna to re-evaluate her present life. She knows that she wouldn't be who she is now if she hadn't gone through those experiences as a child and if she hadn't Cameron as a friend. How different would her life have been if he had stuck around? How different will it be now that he's back? Suddenly, her boyfriend, her friends, and her routines at home and at school seem surreal. She unintentionally slips back into some old habits, such as stealing candy bars and binge eating when she's alone.

Relayed in first-person narrative, Jenna's journey is emotional and believable. When she shed those pounds, she didn't shed her shyness. Though she could change her name, she couldn't change what happened to her. Meanwhile, Cameron's struggle to stay strong while he searches for a place in the world makes him an interesting mix of protector and someone who needs protecting. Though she doesn't ask him to be, nor is he trying to be, he isn't Jenna's White Knight. They both need saving in one way or another.

Though I greatly enjoyed Sara Zarr's debut novel, Story of a Girl, I was even more impressed by her sophomore Sweethearts. It's a compulsive read filled with tension and truth. Readers will want to know what happened to the main characters as children, something which is revealed in flashes and slivers throughout the book, and they will care what happens to them as teenagers.

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr delicately describes a fragile friendship. Second chances don't come around very often, and when they do, you have to make choices for yourself, for better or for worse, and find the strength to move on.

What is a friend? Who are your real friends?

Nowadays, we all have MySpace friends and listserve friends, IM friends and texting friends, in addition to our traditional school friends, neighborhood friends, and those we acquire over the years through a variety of life experiences.

For me, there was a girl with an abutting backyard with whom I played well when I was a preschooler, long-lost buddies in black and white photos from my earliest school days, the tall guy who befriended me on the playground following our family's move in the middle of my third grade year (I still know and visit him.), and a boy from Smithtown I met at daycamp with whom I remember walking with our arms around each other one summer. There were study friends and Boy Scout friends and the members of all the various extracurricular and social groups to which I belonged during high school. Being as old as I am, the list of old friends goes on and on and on.

But we might ask ourselves: How many of those friends "for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul"? And to how many people have we been such a friend?

"There are things I want to remember about Cameron Quick that I can't entirely, like the pajamas he wore when he used to sleep over, and his favorite cereal, or how it felt to hold his hand as we walked home from school in third grade. I want to remember exactly how we became friends in the first place, a definite starting line that I can visit again and again. He's a story I want to know from page one.

"My brain doesn't seem to work that way. Most specific things about Cameron are fuzzy -- the day we met, how we got so close, exact words we said to each other. There are only moments, snapshots, pieces of a puzzle. Once in a while I feel them right in my hand, real as the present, but usually it's more like I'm grasping for vapor. I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there's stuff you don't know, can't know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I'm convinced there are parts of myself hidden inside them."

As an impoverished elementary student in thrift store garb, Jennifer Harris is shunned by the schoolmates who tauntingly call her "Fattifer." Her closet eating habits -- which include frequently stealing food from schoolmates and stores -- are clearly the product of regularly being left to fend for herself by her single mom who is forever running between work and nursing school.

The one person in the world Jennifer can always depend on is her only friend and fellow outcast Cameron Quick. But Cameron has his own problems and secrets, including a nightmarish father as Jennifer learns first-hand that horrific day -- her ninth birthday -- when she visits Cameron's house to collect a present he has made for her.

Soon thereafter, Cameron and his family disappear and the eventual rumor at school is that he has moved away and then died. Jennifer's mother acknowledges that the rumor is, indeed, fact.

"The two questions came into my head again: How could you have left me? Why didn't you say good-bye?"

Eight years later, Jennifer Harris has reinvented herself into Jenna Vaughn, a teen who has determinedly shed her excessive weight and her former lack of composure. Her mother's remarriage has cleared up the former problems of poverty. Jenna attends a charter school where she has popular friends and a popular boyfriend: ("Sometimes I worried that I should be feeling more for him than I actually did, but I tended to push those worries aside and focus on how it felt to be part of it, to be seen by everyone as worthy of couplehood").

Eight years after she last sees him, Cameron Quick suddenly and inexplicably reappears in Jenna/Jennifer's life just as precipitously as he had disappeared from it. The presence of Cameron will compel her to determine whether she is Jenna or Jennifer.

I was thoroughly caught up in the tale of SWEETHEARTS, a story of a once-in-a-lifetime friendship and what has befallen the two long-lost friends as they pursued their radically divergent paths through childhood and adolescence. It is a book that sure has me contemplating relationships with friends past and present.

Jennifer Harris used to be that poor, chubby kid who sat alone in the cafeteria. Well, almost alone. There was Cameron Quick, another social outcast. Another kid living in poverty and living on the fringe of third grade society. He was her only friend and the only person who ever understood Jennifer Harris. And then he disappeared.

Years pass. Jennifer gets a new stepfather, a new house, a new school, a new name, a new life. She reinvents herself as Jenna Vaughn. Jenna Vaughn is one of the pretty, thin popular girls. She has friends and a hot boyfriend. But she also has a secret - a dark memory that ties her forever to Cameron Quick and to the old Jennifer Harris, who never really left. SWEETHEARTS is the story of Cameron's return to Jennifer's life and what happens when her two worlds meet.

As a National Book Award Finalist, Sara Zarr has a lot riding on this next novel. There will be inevitable comparisons to STORY OF A GIRL. Can this second book live up to that standard? Truth be told, I liked SWEETHEARTS even better. The characters in this novel absolutely shine, from the insecure third grade Jennifer and the third grade Cameron whose generosity and fierce loyalty made me want him for a friend, to the high school version of these kids, still haunted by their grade school selves. The minor characters shine, too. One of my favorites was Jenna's stepfather, whose quiet support helps Jenna and her mother rebuild what was broken so many years ago.

Some character-driven novels sacrifice pace and tension, but that's not the case with SWEETHEARTS. From the very first chapter, readers sense there's a story from Jennifer's childhood that's not being told in its entirety. Zarr reveals that story in bits and pieces, snippets of memory and elegantly woven flashbacks throughout the book. All the while, the parts of the story left unspoken create powerful tension.

I read an advance release copy of SWEETHEARTS in just a few sittings. When I was away from the book, I spent half my time thinking about the characters and hoping things would go well for them. They grow on you like that. Sara Zarr has written another fantastic novel -- one that celebrates the power of childhood friendships, loyalty, and inner strength. Like STORY OF A GIRL, Zarr's new release is loaded with realistic characters, hope, and heart. The fabulous cookie cover art delivers on its promise - SWEETHEARTS an absolutely delicious read.

Nine-year-old Jennifer Harris, cursed with a lisp and baby fat, is friendless until she gets up to the courage to talk to Cameron Quick, a poor, awkward boy who is also a social outcast. They are instant soul mates until Cameron mysteriously moves away without saying good bye. Eight years later Jennifer Harris has become Jenna Vaughn, a skinny, popular high-schooler with a hunky boyfriend. Yet she is still haunted by the memories of her childhood friend. When Cameron suddenly reappears at school, Jenna finds it increasingly difficult to keep up her new image and at the same time hide from her past and the horrific secret they share.

I compulsively read this book until I finished but didn't know what to think afterward. Initially I felt a little let down by the melancholy mood it left me in. Though this is ultimately a hopeful story about love between two teens, it's definitely not another teen romance novel. I knew this going into it, but I didn't expect it to be quite as heartbreaking. That being said, Zarr writes excellent characters in whom you become emotionally invested. Her deftly woven flashbacks of the unspeakable experience they shared do make it a real page turner. Zarr's portrayal of the power of childhood relationships and the permanent marks they make is spot-on. I felt both for the characters and for myself. It brought some of my childhood and teenage wounds to the surface - close friendships that never saw closure; memories of childhood bullying and social exclusion that still hurt. For better or for worse, this is realistic teen fiction at its best

I enjoyed this book. SWEETHEARTS is a character-driven novel where there isn't much action but a big emotional journey with quite a kick.

Jennifer Harris is a social outcast. She is fat and the other girls in third grade are very mean. She eats lunch alone until the day that she decides to make Cameron Quick her friend. After that, she and Cameron are always together, both of them outcasts.

Then, one day Cameron disappears, and the other kids tell her that he is dead.

The book then forwards on to present day and Jennifer has recreated herself. She is pretty, popular, has a cute boyfriend, and has changed her name to Jenna. She is a senior but she feels like she is just acting a part. It takes a lot of energy to be the girl that she is.

Enter Cameron Quick -- who she thought was dead. He reenters her life and the past comes flooding back in big waves. They reconnect and discover what real love is all about. I liked the fact that this relationship between Cameron and Jennifer was real but not sexual. In fact, when she does have sex with her boyfriend she feels unconnected to him. This love is not about sex but about experiences that will live within you for a lifetime. It rushes in and takes over.

The characters of the story were real and you truly wanted to be their friends. I especially liked Jennifer's dad. He was someone that I wish I could talk with for hours. The book is also one that doesn't have a definitive ending. I kept thinking up fun endings for days afterwards.

Reviewed by: Marta Morrison

3.5 Stars - While reading this book I didn't know what to feel. I was confused throughout and maybe that was partially from the fact that our main character Jennifer - now Jenna was confused and troubled from beginning to almost the end.

We see her and her best friend Cameron at nine years old struggling with bullies and their home lives. It was hard to see both struggle, but the bond they had just was something that people are lucky to find once in a lifetime. When Cameron moves away she's left alone to fend for herself. She's told some tragic news and her life becomes even more depressing. I felt that even at that young age Cameron and Jennifer were somewhat of soul mates and they needed each other more then even their parents understood.

A few years later Jennifer's mother gets married and they move. She takes this time to reinvent herself. She changes everything about her, even her name to Jenna to make sure she never has to live the way she did during her grade school years, but Cameron is always there in her memories.

Now in high school she has great friends, a boyfriend, and lives in a nice house. Everything she could ever want. No matter how much she changes in others eyes, she can't keep herself but thinking about that little 9 year old boy, Cameron and just what that friendship meant to her, what he meant to her. He was really the only person in the world who knew, understood and loved her for who she was inside and out.

On her 17th birthday Jenna always remembers back to that birthday she can't soon forget, one that would forever change her and Cameron for the rest of their lives. Later that night she shocked to find a note from Cameron, whom she hasn't seen or talked to since they were 9.

The majority of this story is told in present day showing her feelings for her mom, step dad, friends, boyfriend and Cameron with flash backs to grade school and that birthday that changed everything. We see Jenna struggle to cope and figure out whom she is more so then who she's transformed herself into.

This was a story that was layered by the relationship past and present between Jennifer/Jenna and Cameron and the fall out of the bullies and events from so long ago. Jenna has changed but she's still the damaged person from the past and with Cameron there she's bound to have to face some truths.

I haven't read anything by Zarr before and I can say that I'm sure to pick something up by this author again. It was well written with unforgettable characters. If you haven't read this book yet and are looking for something non paranormal... since I know many of us tend to read more of that these days, then you should look into this book. Enjoy!

For more info and reviews please visit my Book Review Blog here - [..] - A Life Bound By Books

Nine year olds Jennifer and Cameron are the outcasts at their school. Jennifer is overweight, shy, and withdrawn, and Cameron, who comes from an abusive home is just well--different. Both are endlessly teased, and they somehow find each other and form a deep connection. Until one day Cameron doesn't show up at school, and the teacher says he moved. To say Jennifer is hurt because he didn't say goodbye is an understatement. She's crushed and just doesn't understand. Then one day the bullies at recess tell her that Cameron died. When her own mother doesn't tell her differently, Jennifer is devastated and decides that the only way she can survive is to bury the person she is with him.

Eight years later, Jennifer is now Jenna, and she's completely reinvented herself. She's in great shape, goes to a different school, and has lots of friends, including a boyfriend Ethan, the handsomest boy in school. Externally, she seems happy and seems to have the perfect life. Internally, she struggles to keep "Jennifer" inside and is haunted by a terrifying experience that occurred at Cameron's house on her ninth birthday. On her seventeenth birthday, she discovers that Cameron did not die and that he's in her town. Memories and suppressed feelings come flooding back as she struggles to cope with this news.

Has their connection remained strong after all these years? Why didn't he try to contact her before? Why didn't her mother tell her the truth? What exactly happened at Cameron's house so many years ago? Do Jenna and Cameron still have such a strong connection after all these years? Will Jenna leave Ethan for Cameron? Can she keep Jennifer inside? Sara Zarr's second novel Sweethearts answers all these questions through a profound and gut-wrenching story.

Zarr does an exceptional job of drawing you in and make you FEEL Jenna's emotions. As I was reading, I felt a lump in the pitt of my stomach as Jenna relived the horrifying day at Cameron's house. I felt anger, confusion, heartache, and fear as Jenna struggles with Cameron's return and all of the emotions that come flooding in with it.

From the very first chapter I was hooked as I read the following passage:

"Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. They're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics, and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops." (p. 5, Advanced Reader Copy).

In addition to resounding passages like this one, Zarr is careful not to make Jenna "too adult." She expertly reminds us that Jenna is seventeen through carefully crafted scenarios that take us inside the head of a teenager. Jenna grapples with friendships, her weight and self-image, boyfriends, the pressure to have sex, the pressure to drink--things that many young adults can identify with.

It's evident that Sara Zarr poured her heart and soul into this book, and I can't even remember the last time I read a book that resonated with me as much as Sweethearts did. If you liked Story of a Girl,you will love Sweethearts.

Originally posted at The Well-Read Child.

This is an excellent growing-up novel for any teen. Jenna Vaughn is a senior at a small charter school in Utah who, on the outside, has it all - friends, a boyfriend, a great body etc.

What Jenna's friends don't know is her rocky childhood or the one boy who helped ease her loneliness.

Peppered throughout the book are memories, little things that Jenna remembers about Cameron Quick and her own childhood. She remembers the day he snuck a ring and a note into her lunchbox saying that he loved her. She remembers being teased by the popular kids and being called Fattifer. She remembers the week Cameron spent at her house and how hyped on sugar he got after eating chocolate chip pancakes. She remembers the dollhouse he built for her birthday and escaping from his father. She remembers compulsively stealing food.

One day Cameron doesn't come to school and then he's just not there for a few months. When Jennifer finally gets her courage to ask the teacher says that he's moved away and the kids at school tell her he has died. Either way Cameron is gone and he didn't even say goodbye. Eight years later on Jenna's birthday Cameron shows up again to place a birthday card and a cheap plastic ring in her mailbox.

Jenna is thrilled Cameron is alive and hurt that he never contacted her before this. She's never forgotten what he meant to her but she's not sure how to incorporate him into the new life she's built for herself.

There are aspects of the book I really related to and I really felt some heart-tugs for Jenna and Cameron. The book was well-written in almost a journal style with randomly interspersed memories and completely from Jenna's point of view. The reader only knows what Jenna knows and sometimes this is helpful and sometimes it hinders the whole Cameron picture since it's based on her childhood information.

I felt the end was unfinished but even that felt right after I thought about it. Jenna's mother said she always felt there was something unfinished about Jenna and Cameron and Jenna reflects later that that unfinished something was love. The book felt unfinished because their love is unfinished and that made me feel infinitely better about the ending and not really KNOWING how the two of them end up and if it all works out.

All in all an excellent book.

What attracted me to this book initially was the cover (I saw it at the Little Brown stand in Bologna) - doesn't that frosted cookie look yummy? I also liked the jacket copy: "Sweethearts is about the power of memory, the bond of friendship, and the quiet resilience of our childhood hearts." So yeah, not exactly high concept, but I like to read "quieter" books every now and then too. And this one was just lovely.

High School Senior Jenna Vaughn has a cute boyfriend Ethan, tons of friends and seems to have it all together. But she still carries the scars of a solitary childhood - one in which her harried single mother didn't seem to have time for her and she only had one friend - fellow outcast and first love Cameron Quick who disappears one day without explanation.

When Cameron suddenly reappears years later, Jenna must come to terms with a traumatizing event in her past, confront her mother about her abandonment issues, and figure out what place Cameron, Ethan, and her new friends have in her life.

I found the story and Jenna's character arc to be very authentic. I have to admit, my first instinct was to scoff when I found out how relatively tame the "traumatic event" was - I mean it is very far from Cupcake Brown's childhood as she describes in her memoir A Piece of Cake (I urge you to check it for a great true story of triumph over adversity). Upon further reflection, I realized that within Jenna's scope of experience and from her narrow point of view, this one event was in fact earth-shattering.

The writing is top notch throughout and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a last chapter that is more beautifully expressed than this one. This book really makes you think about how certain people have touched your life and left a lasting mark in your heart.