Summary: Ever since Jennifer’s best (and only) friend Cameron disappeared in fifth grade, she’s been driven to make herself over so no one will bully her anymore. That meant losing a ton of weight, doing her own laundry, learning social skills, and eventually changing her name to Jenna after her mother remarried and she started at a new school. Now, a senior, Jenna has a circle of friends and even a boyfriend, Ethan.
Then Cameron returns, and Jenna begins to remember things about her childhood she had safely forgotten, including an incident with Cameron’s father on her birthday shortly before he disappeared. Jenna feels a connection with Cameron and soon she is questioning her friendships and her boyfriend, wondering if they will ever “know” her the way Cameron knows her.
And I will fix you…
I pretty much knew I would love this book, reading about it on the Forever Young Adult blog. Those girls are so obsessed with Cameron Quick! I had enjoyed Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl and felt like this was equally well-paced and realistic, only with more sexual tension of the good variety (Story of a Girl deals some tension of the bad variety). Cameron seemed like such a lost soul I wanted to crawl into the book (okay, my car’s CD player, since I listened to the audio) and help him myself (despite knowing from experience that sometimes a person just needs to help himself and you can never really “fix” anyone). Therefore I was okay with the ending although I did wish it had turned out differently.
If this had been a teen movie…
Jenna would have gone to the prom with Ethan but ended up dancing with Cameron, and then there would have been a brawl and as Cameron went to the airport to leave, Jenna would chase after him and give a long speech about how they were meant to be together…
Work in Progress 