Summer Book 2

A Totally Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

I bought, or rather my husband bought this for me, for a couple of reasons. First, it has a cute cover. Second, the names of the main characters are Hannah and Sam. My daughter's name is Hannah, and her best friend, although female, is Sam. Obviously, I had to have it.

This has two authors, so all the Hannah sections were written by Lucy, and all the Sam sections were written by Tom (it says so on the inside of the back cover). This led me to wonder if all of the David Levithan and Rachel Cohn collaborations are done the same way, but that is a tangent to save for later.

Sam and Hannah live in London. They go to different schools, and both just finished their exams for their last year of school. Hannah's best friend, Stella, is throwing a party at her mansion like house, sans parents, to celebrate. Hannah laments that she is still a virgin, and has decided that tonight is the night. She's going to lose her virginity to some guy she's crushed on intermittently for years named Freddie. She meets Sam while psyching herself up in the bathroom, and they instantly click. Unfortunately, Freddie shows up, so Hannah goes in search of him. Things do not go well with Freddie since Stella has taken it upon herself to control the situation. Turns out, it's ok because Hannah really felt a connection with Sam. She doesn't know his name though, and he becomes known as Toilet Boy.

Sam, for his part, feels an instant connection to Hannah too but loses her to Freddie. He goes to hang out with his friends in the closet under the stairs in Stella's kitchen, where Stella throws herself at him. After a lengthy kiss, they exchange numbers. The next day, Stella asks Sam to meet her and a friend. He has no idea that the friend is Hannah. Thus begins a series of awkward moments that encompass a summer of Hannah and Sam finding and then losing one another.

This was a cute story, but the first two-thirds of the book dragged a bit more than I would have liked. The end more than made up for the dragging.