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Sleepaway Girls

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Sleepaway Girls
Sleepaway Girls by Jen Calonita is the perfect spin on a classic summer camp filled with friendship, hilarious situations, and sweet romance.

Plot Summary:

Samantha Montgomery, or Sam, is fed up with Malomark. (Malomark is her ship name for her best friend, Mal, and her new bad boy boyfriend, Mark.) She couldn’t stand another “No, baby you’re cuter” or another instance where she ended up the third wheel. Sam decides she will be a CIT, counselor in training, at Whispering Pines sleepaway camp in the Catskills. (2 hours away from her home in New York City Suburbia.) To camp, she brings a small palm recorder that she plans to record message to send back home to Mal.

At camp, Sam meets Courtney, a beautiful, boy-crazy girl, who likes to be called Court, Grace, a super athletic, outgoing young lady who reaches out to Sam and holds the group together, and Emily, a girl who loves romance novels and wishes she has a boyfriend like most of those characters. These four girls form the Sleepaway Girls. They talk about everything together and they record their conversations on the palm-recorder. There conversations range from how bad the food is at camp, to Sam and some of the other girls’ crushes, love problems, and personal qualities. Sam gets closer to these girls than she could imagine getting with Mal.

Author Praise:

Jen Calonita hit this one out of the park. The writing is hilarious, but when things get serious, she knows exactly how to change the tone. The character development is phenomenal. The setting of the camp is so well described one can almost taste the nasty food and smell the lake water. The reader feels as if she is part of the Sleepaway Girls’ conversation. The novel is based off a common story. A new girl comes to camp; she is not a “lifer” and that bothers the mean girl. Said mean girl gets jealous and starts scheming against said new girl. New girl starts to make very close friends and forgets about some of her old ones. Many boys are interested in the new girl. New girl likes one, but gets into a sticky situation and kisses another. How will she tell the boy she actually likes the truth? Even though the premise of the story is very simple, Jen Calonita fills the plot with color and paints a wonderful picture. This is truly one of my all-time favorite books.

Rating and Reasoning:

I give this book five stars because of the astonishing character development, realistic plot, and adorable love story. I read this book twice a year and I have been reading it since the summer between fifth and sixth grade. I truly love this book and wish Whispering Pines summer camp was a real place. If this place was truly real, I would sign up to go in a heartbeat.

Audience: Sixth to Seventh graders
Publisher: Little Brown
Date Published: January 1, 2009
ISBN: 9780316017176
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Realistic Fiction and Romance

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  1. AnonymousApril 23, 2018 at 6:25 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. AnonymousMay 19, 2021 at 8:21 AM

    I loved this book!!!

    ReplyDelete

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