Crush » (New Edition)

Isn't she fazed by any of this? Does she do this all the time? Make unsuspecting, seemingly straight girls squirm? Or am I making it all up? But making up what? The butterflies are real. The fact that I want to kiss her is real. Would kissing a girl be different from kissing boys? If all I did was kiss her would that make me queer? Are you queer just for thinking it? Or does doing it make you queer? And what if I don't want to be queer? Do I get a say in this at all? Because of a moment of indiscretion, Hope's parents send her to New York to spend the summer with her hipster sister while they travel to Thailand. Miserable, Hope ends up meeting Nat, and developing a powerful crush. The only problem is that Nat is a girl. Hope is pretty sure she isn't gay. Or is she? Struggling with new feelings, fitting in and a strange city far from home, Hope finds that love—and acceptance—comes in many different forms. Carrie Mac has also written Orca Soundings novel Charmed, and her teen novel, The Beckoners, is also available. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and has spent time in New York City.

Children's Literature

If at seventeen years old you've already experienced love, pot, and rock and roll on a hippy commune, what is left to be discovered? Life off the beaten path, buttressed by a liberal upbringing, have prepared our heroine, Hope, for a close encounter in a coming-of-age story that explores emotional territory in seldom charted waters. Hope is bundled off to New York City for the summer to live with her older sister, Joy. Their parents are off to Thailand to build a school based on their organic farm-based tenets where both girls were educated in a home-school environment. Joy has turned out to be less than joyful. Motivated to find a less combative environment, Hope leaves her sister's apartment in Brooklyn to live and work several blocks away as a nanny for a lesbian couple whom she has befriended. Blended into her new life is a new girlfriend. The girlfriend and Hope fall in love, and Hope must decide whether or not to take a chance on this new relationship. This book is the second installment in the "Orca Soundings" series and it handles a difficult subject with humor and credibility, providing an insightful and thoughtful look at same-sex female relationships, an important resource for an audience whose options are often limited. This book would be a good addition to a high school class on human relationships or on teenage sociology, sexuality, and/or psychology.