Second Star (Alyssa B. Sheinmel)

A twisty story about love, loss, and lies, this contemporary oceanside adventure is tinged with a touch of dark magic as it follows seventeen-year-old Wendy Darling on a search for her missing surfer brothers. Wendy’s journey leads her to a mysterious hidden cove inhabited by a tribe of young renegade surfers, most of them runaways like her brothers. Wendy is instantly drawn to the cove’s charismatic leader, Pete, but her search also points her toward Pete's nemesis, the drug-dealing Jas. Enigmatic, dangerous, and handsome, Jas pulls Wendy in even as she's falling hard for Pete. A radical reinvention of a classic, Second Star is an irresistible summer romance about two young men who have yet to grow up--and the troubled beauty trapped between them.

I tried to read this book.

I really did.

I thought, Peter Pan retelling?

Awesome!

A younger, sexier Hook?

Awesomer!

A love triangle between Peter Pan and Hook...

Anyway, the story opens just after teenage Wendy Darling has graduated. She lives on the coast of California with her parents, her dog, Nana and her missing brothers, John and Michael. Her brothers are twins and surfers who disappeared one pregnancy nine months ago. (Haha, that's all I could think when she said nine months.) She has a best friend named Fiona, who doesn't go, do or think without her boyfriend at her side. This part of Fiona's cardboard character really bothered annoyed me.

Anyway, Wendy soon meets Peter Pan's Second Star counterpart, Pete. Pete is a surfer and former foster care teen who lives with a bunch of other runaways (all teens; no kids in this world) in a abandoned mansion on a cliff. Pretty soon into meeting him, Wendy falls for Pete, who kisses her, although he has this complicated relationship with a blonde named Belle.

They spend the night together, the night they meet, just kissing. Not even making out, just kissing. Pete seems nice and boring enough. Soon after meeting him, Wendy lies to her parents that she is going on a road trip with her best friend and like typical YA parents, they're all like, Sure, honey, whatever you like. We're barely around anyway!

Then she enlists the help of her best friend into lying to her parents and tells Fiona that she's going on a trip
Wendy doesn't go to Neverland. Instead, she goes to Kensie Cove or Kensington (a allusion to the Kensington Gardens in which Peter Pan lived before Neverland) and meets this guy named Pete. He is a former foster care kid who lives with  a bunch of runway teens in abandoned mansions in the cove. He takes Wendy in and teaches her to surf which is something her brothers never did.

However, Pete is also a liar because he knew John and Michael, but lies to Wendy about it early in the novel. From what I learned from skimming and skipping around, the twins used to live with Pete and his gang until he found out they were using fairy dust and kicked them out.

Belle later reveals that she saw what happened. John and Michael were high on 'dust' and tried to surf a forty foot wave. She doesn't say it out loud, but alludes to their death after they wiped out.

The other half of the Kensie belongs to his former partner, Jas (aka Hook) who now deals a drug called fairy dust and has a gang full of dusters who live with him. Jas and Pete used to be surfing buddies (think Plankton and Mr. Krabs) until Jas started dealing and Pete excommunicated him from his house.

Angry about Pete's lies, Wendy leaves and goes and joins up with Jas' crew. However, to get into his house to look for him she has to take some dust. That's the price to get in. She does and the stuff messes her up so bad that she ends up on Fiona's front step. Fiona calls her parents who take her home and send her too her room to "re-establish authority."

This is especially funny because while she is locked away in her room, Jas shows up and they run away to try to look for her brothers. It was around here that I just couldn't take anymore and gave up reading this book. Now I understand the term DNF (Did Not Finish) when it should be called CNF-Could Not Finish.

At the end, Wendy is with Jas, Pete and Belle as this famous waved called Witch Tree shows up. Something happens as the the wave hits and her last memories are of Jas. Then she wakes up in the psych ward of a hospital with her parents.

They tell her she wasn't on a boat with Jas, Pete, Belle and crew.There were no boats out on the sea during the storm because Coast Guard shut the area down. Instead, she tried to swim out into the sea during a storm on Pebble Beach. And no one brought Wendy to the hospital because she was alone. Basically, the girl is crazy.Her brothers are still missing at sea (aka dead) and she imagined everything. Fiona is the only one who has realized that she has gone crazy.

She either went went off the deep end due to her grief and started doing the combination of drugs that make up dust or the drug cocktail made her lose her mind. Either way, she's off her rocker, they say. So she goes through therapy and starts saying everything's fake to convince her parents no matter how wrong it feels to her.

Until it doesn't anymore.

She gets out the crazy house and slowly bides her time until everyone trusts her again. Then, Wendy eventually goes back to Kensington Cove to see if it really wasn't real. Apparently, the place was once called Kensington Beach before all the mansions in the area were abandoned. The houses are empty and rundown without any trace of Pete or Jas or their crews. The beach doesn't even exist. There's no white sand just a bunch of waves and rocks.

I'm sure this novel would be better if the author hadn't tried to connect the story to Peter Pan. I might've even enjoyed it more. I mean, I kind of understand the connection. Wendy (and her brothers) run away with Peter Pan to Neverland because they weren't ready to grow up at the moment. Peter Pan offers that escape.

Eventually, however, Wendy comes to the realization that she has to and is ready to grow up and she and her brothers go home.

Wendy in Second Star goes to Pete and Kensie Cove to find her brothers... Although, if she's truly crazy then she went to Kensie Cove because she isn't quite ready to face her brothers death. Which is also representative of the escape Pete provides her. However, eventually she allows herself to come to terms with it (aka when Belle tells her she witnessed). See, that's soo interesting. It just would've been a lot better if the story wasn't connected to Peter Pan. I just wasn't feeling it.

I especially felt like What the fuck? because at the end Wendy receives some mail. It's a picture inside a envelope without any address or stamps because someone just slipped it in the mailbox. And the picture is of Jas and Pete with surfboards and their arms around each other. Suddenly, Wendy starts wondering if the Witch Tree wave could've washed out the beach, messed up Pete's house and literally swallow her memories. She isn't crazy, she decides. Jas must've pushed her in the right current then saved the others then he and Pete went off the surf the world together. But someone wanted her to know it was all real.

...or maybe she's just crazy after all and put that picture in her own mailbox.

And if that's true, then what was the point of the story? Either way, I sure was disappointed.

Being Sloane Jacobs (Lauren Hoppill)

Meet Sloane Emily Jacobs: a seriously stressed-out figure-skater from Washington, D.C., who choked during junior nationals and isn’t sure she’s ready for a comeback. What she does know is that she’d give anything to escape the mass of misery that is her life. Now meet Sloane Devon Jacobs, a spunky ice hockey player from Philly who’s been suspended from her team for too many aggressive hip checks. Her punishment? Hockey camp, now, when she’s playing the worst she’s ever played. If she messes up? Her life will be over. When the two Sloanes meet by chance in Montreal and decide to trade places for the summer, each girl thinks she’s the lucky one: no strangers to judge or laugh at Sloane Emily, no scouts expecting Sloane Devon to be a hero. But it didn’t occur to Sloane E. that while avoiding sequins and axels she might meet a hockey hottie—and Sloane D. never expected to run into a familiar (and very good-looking) face from home. It’s not long before the Sloanes discover that convincing people you’re someone else might be more difficult than being yourself.

It wasn't until I was about a fourth of the way into this book before I realized that, hey, this is the Princess and the Pauper...just, on ice.

Each of the Sloane Jacobs is trying to run from something. Both are having family problems as well as each are choking on the ice. I almost wish they were the same character because they might as well have been. The problem I wondered going into this book was how the author was going to try to make each voice distinct and she kind of failed in my opinion. S. Emily is the rich figure skater whose senator father is having an affair with his secretary.

She happened to walk into his office and see...this part I'm not so sure about. Emily spent a good chunk of the novel trying to hide this from us. And when the scene was finally described to us, I wasn't entirely sure what she saw. Anyways, this is what has been causing her to choke because her mother doesn't know what she witnessed but her dad does. And he tries to buy her off with money and snacks. (Lol, what a loser.)

Then there's S. Devon. She's the Pauper counter part of this story. I can't remember exactly why she keeps choking on ice but she describes the sensation as "tingles". Haha, funny that she's supposed to be this badass hockey player who refers to choking as 'tingles'. 

Anyways, Devon is supposedly dating this musician named Dylan who never is shown in the story and she only has one interaction with. In fact, now that I think about it, she cheats on him. But more about him later. Devon's mom is also an alcoholic who got banished away to rehab and now Devon is about to get banished to hockey camp after getting into a fight on the ice.

At the hotel both girls are staying at before leaving for their respective camps they run into each other and have a very Parent Trap reaction with the other. First they don't like each other, then they realize they look pretty damn similar. 

This part of the novel was very Suspend All Your Disbelief. Because apparently both Sloane's are 5'4 and have the same dark, long hair but Devon has more pounds then Emily. It's not already crazy enough that they share a name but now they have the same height and hair color. Too much. Anyways, then S. Emily gets the idea for them to switch. With a night of preparation the girls switch places. 

Devon goes off to rich people's figure skating camp. She quickly finds out figure skating is harder then she thought and makes friends with a black guy and a redhead. The redhead is literally only seen like three times in the book but suddenly she and Devon are close? Okay... Andy, the African American, was the typical token black BFF. I nearly thought the author was going to a another level and make him gay, but I don't think that's what she was doing. Haha, I'm not sure. 

Just when I was happy that a Character of Color wasn't having their skin color compared to food or coffee, Devon runs into Nando. This guy she knew back at home who I think is Hispanic or Spanish or something. His skin is described as coffee with cream or sugar. Who the fuck remembers what coffee looks like when you add stuff to it? Anyways, Devon finds him delightfully attractive but falls too fast. I never understood the concept of Insta-Love until reading this scene. Not it all makes sense. What I do like is that Devon managed to keep her wits about her and her priorities straight... Mostly. Nando is supposed to be at college on hockey scholarship but he reveals that the pressure got to him and he dropped out. Devon went all Bella-Swan on his ass and decided not to tell him about her own choking issues as well as running away to get away from this. Her reasoning is that he seems to hold on to the idea that she is thriving, so so can he. She's his life line.

Meanwhile, S. Emily is at hockey camp. She meets this guy named Matt who is the typical man-whore who has been in a lot of places... haha, there was no better way to put it. However, he soon is chasing after Emily claiming that:

While neither romances really grabbed me Matt's character really pissed me off. He and Emily agree to be friends and then he gets mad at her when she blows off watching game tape with him and his team. First, she had something else to do. Also, it's not like you were alone; your whole freaking team was there!!! And his response and the way her doormat ass apologized really irked me. Like, mother like daughter, I suppose. Anyways, his next plan of action is to ambush her with a surprise obviously not a just-friends picnic then takes her around town where they kiss. They really don't know each other, except to impress him she pulled a fire alarm, they rode on the bus to camp together and she told him she didn't want to be with him because he was gross. They really did not convince me.

Anyways, both girls also attract bullies and while the Doormat (aka Emily) actually manages to tame hers, Devon isn't as successful. Both girls are living life happily until shit hits the fan.

First, Nando happens to run into Matt and hears him gushing all about his Sloane Jacobs. Angry that she has been playing him when she has a whole other guy, Nando gets mad and takes off. Haha, ironically he has an right to be mad. Sure, Devon isn't really dating Matt and stringing him along but there is the whole matter of Dylan back at home.

Emily's dad's scandal is exposed and Devon's evil roommate sees a picture of Emily and realizes that she isn't who she is claiming to be. She tries to blackmail Devon into leaving (this happens literally like three times in this story) but Devon gets mad and tries to kick her ass. Then runs away.

She goes to Emily's camp and tells her what's up and Matt overhears everything. He flips shit because (and ironically he has a point) Emily made a big deal about not being able to trust him when she was the one who was lying. She didn't tell him the truth. They fight, she cries and he leaves. Then she and Devon make a plan to run away again. They'll meet up at the airport and run. But in the end, they change their minds and finish out the games/showcases they've been preparing for for a month. Both do well and each of their real parents (not Emily's dad though) see them. Each girl manages to fix things with their boys and their families seem okay.

The ending also annoys me because there really is no diversity between the girls' voices. Devon is supposed to be a tomboy but yet she knows the names of designer handbags and is giving more feminine descriptions of things. And in the end, they both decide they aren't sure if they want to stick with their sports any long. WHAT THE HELL? So what was the point of all this then?