A Touch of Scarlet

May 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-This sequel to A Breath of Eyre (Kensington, 2012) finds Emma, 17, returning to boarding school for her junior year after spending a summer with her boyfriend, Gray. He heads to Coast Guard training while she immerses herself in her neglected assigned reading, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Once she is back at school, Emma observes how much many of her friends have changed over the summer and struggles with maintaining a long-distance romance. When she kisses her roommate's boyfriend, Owen, and becomes the recipient of schoolwide scorn, her life begins to echo Hawthorne's novel. The heartbroken teen stumbles upon the world of Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl. She interacts with the characters and then returns to her reality, puzzled by what she has seen. References to the first book let readers know that this experience is not new to Emma; she has been sucked into literary realities before. Her visits into the 19th-century story continue, and she learns things about herself and her friends. This knowledge she needs as she deals with the fallout from kissing Owen, her uncertain relationship with Gray, and the gossip surrounding a girl at school who has discovered she's gay. Mature readers who are familiar with the literary references will have a greater appreciation of the conflicts and resolutions. Enough backstory is revealed to make this a stand-alone read.-Denise Moore, O'Gorman Junior High School, Sioux Falls, SD

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2013
Emma's adventures in literature continue in this smart, funny follow-up to A Breath of Eyre (2012) that will have readers hauling out their battered school copies of The Scarlet Letter for a second look. Emma is miserable when Gray breaks up with her not long after leaving for Coast Guard training. It's unfair to ask her to put her life on hold for a year, he explains. As Emma recovers her balance, she begins to appreciate her unwanted freedom while remaining unsure how to use it--she's still figuring out who she is. "Take risks. Make mistakes," her grandmother advises, and Emma does. Her new hairdo is a success, but after she's caught impulsively kissing roommate Michelle's boyfriend, she becomes a school pariah. "There is no place more hellish to a teenage girl in poor social standing than a high school cafeteria," Emma reflects. Repeatedly, via dream or trance state, she's transported back to Puritan New England, where she encounters someone who knows all about public humiliation: Hester Prynne. Though parallels drawn between Emma's life and Hawthorne's novel are nonlinear and intriguing, Mont takes fewer literary risks with primary sources here. Gray's more conventional, his edginess muted. It's Emma's identity--less crisis than quest--that matters. With help from her fictional role model Hester, it's an illuminating journey. (Fiction. 13 & up)

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May 1, 2013
Grades 8-11 The course of true love hits both the skids as well as the classics reading list in this steamy sequel to A Breath of Eyre (2012). Having benefited from falling into a Bront' novel in the previous episode, protagonist Emma finds involuntary excursions into The Scarlet Letter to likewise help mark her own progress through similar (but not rigidly parallel) tempests. These range from discovering the sexual secret that is torturing her prep-school roommate to getting a break-up letter from her hunky hon, Gray, and, on the rebound, being caughttwicesnogging other guys. Mont tucks music into her book (the author closes with an annotated playlist), mean girls who become friends, and an attempted protest of the school's antigay policies that evolves into an alternative prom. The author cranks up the heavy breathing, too, including a few visits to third base. She also brings events to an upbeat close for Emma with Gray back and repentant, and the dazzling prospect of an upcoming scholarship year overseas. Next stop: Paris and (hint) the Paris Opera.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)