Mitali Perkins

Secretly in love with her best friend and business partner Steve, fifteen-year-old Jazz must spend the summer away from him when her family goes to India during that country's rainy season to help set up a clinic.

Monsoon Summer

Sarah Sammis

I met Mitali Perkins online via Twitter. One day she tweeted her frustration over getting her books into libraries. Curious, I went online to my library's catalog and saw that they had multiple copies of all but her newest book. They all sounded good so I asked her which book I should read first. She suggested Monsoon Summer.

Monsoon Summer by Mitali Perkins is about a family of four going to India for the summer (monsoon season). It's told from the first person point of view of fifteen year old Jasmine (Jazz) Gardner. They are returning to the orphanage where her mother lived before being adopted by a California couple. Jazz is reluctant to leave her business partner (and potential boyfriend) for the summer. She's nervous about the orphanage, about being in school during her vacation and about losing her friend to the more beautiful and popular girl at their school.

Jazz and her brother are ethnically mixed and by far the most believable pair of California siblings I've run across in fiction. I clicked with them immediately and felt as if I were there with Jazz as she went to school, struggled with writing letters to her would be boyfriend and her developing friendship with Danita, a girl at the orphanage who has a fantastic talent for fashion design.

I don't want to give away anything. Let's just say I loved the book. I tore through it in two days in between my homework and research. When things calm down with my classes I plan to go back and read more of her books.

Monsoon Summer

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