Novel Ink: Book Review | Nantuket Blue by Leila Howland

Format: Hardback

Source: Traded

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Publication Date: May 7, 2013

Pages: 294

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.

I admit that when I saw the cover and read the summary for Nantucket Blue, I immediately had high expectations for this book. Although, I enjoyed reading Nantucket Blue, it wasn’t as good as I was expecting.

Cricket Thompson spends more time at her friend, Jules, house than she does her own. Cricket is such a big part of the Clayton family that they even ask her to come with them on their summer vacation. But that same night something unthinkable happens, and everything changes. Jules now avoiding Cricket and the Clayton family has even taken back the invitation for Cricket to join them in Nantucket.

But for some reason Cricket doesn’t get the hint that Jules is upset with her and that she needs some time away to come to grips with the tragedy that has struck her family, so instead of staying in Providence and giving the family a little space Cricket packs up and heads to Nantucket anyway.

I have to say that at times Cricket got on my nerves quite a bit. I mean Jules dropped hint after hint that she needed some time to herself but Cricket just DOESN’T GET IT and it’s so obvious that I just wanted to smack her and ask her why she wasn’t seeing it.

I’ve seen a lot of people say that Jules was a bitch, and I agree that she was a bit of a bitch to Cricket. But I can also understand why Jules had changed so much; she just suffered something horrible and most of the time things like that will change you, maybe not forever, but at least for a little while.

I’m not real sure what to say about the love interest in this book. Although the romance was very sweet (I just loved the 4^th of July scene), I wasn’t completely sold on the boy.

My favorite part of this book was Crickets time at the Inn with Gavin, George and Liz. And I just loved the part when Cricket finds out how she got her name; I thought that was a great touch. Overall, Nantucket Blue is a good contemporary read that I would recommend to the fans of Sarah Dessen.

Favorite Quotes:

That night, I heard Mom laughing in her bedroom.

“What are you doing?” I called into the darkness

“I’m reading my diary,” she said, nearly wheezing. “This thing is hysterical.”