After Scarlett Hughes's sister returns home from school pregnant and married, Scarlett is forced to take a look inward for the first time. She discovers the necessity of dreams as well as the necessity of facing reality and speaking the truth.

Reviews

Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old Scarlet, self-appointed savior, learns a lesson in the pitfalls of trying to control the lives of others in Deb Caletti's novel (Simon Pulse, 2010). The story begins with her older sister, Juliet, suddenly returning home, married and pregnant, accompanied by her architect-student husband, Hayden, and his dog. Juliet, Hayden, the girls' mom, various colorful neighbors, and an assortment of classmates all with complicated issues drive concerned, busybody Scarlet to an emotional climax as she tries to fill the roles of matchmaker, social worker, psychotherapist, and marriage counselor, while simultaneously dealing with her crush on Hayden. A neighbor's fire and the concurrent loss of Hayden's dog, her sister's disappearance, and the loss of Hayden himself break Scarlet's fix-it track and lead to an epiphany: she can't continue trying to control everyone's life. Teri Clark Linden differentiates the characters, but her rendition of teen voices makes them sound unrealistic. Slow speech and odd inflections are not true to today's teen speech; her adult voices are performed well. The retro song excerpts Linden sings are not true to the original tunes. Note that there is plenty of profanity. Barring the odd teen speech, this audiobook should be popular with girls who enjoy adolescent ber-drama.-Jennifer Ward, Albany Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Juliet was always in the lead, and I was her echo.” So says seventeen-year-old Scarlet about her older sister, who is once again in the lead, having returned home with a husband neither Scarlet nor her mother have ever heard of, let alone met, and a baby on the way. As the summer progresses, Scarlet grows close to Hayden, Juliet’s husband, and begins to worry that Juliet’s old selfishness is going to destroy her new family even before it’s established. Caletti’s fluid, musing style and keen perceptions serve her particularly well in this depiction of Scarlet’s summer of maturation; it’s not so much that the external events are momentous as they believably provide just enough impetus for Scarlet to enrich and transform her view of herself, her sister, and her family. Scarlet’s characterization is particularly original: a happy meddler in people’s lives, she adores leaving secret gifts and pulling strings in ways that will bring joy,