Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: October 4, 2011
Pages: 306
Source: Bought

All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.

Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….

Leila Sales really knew what she was doing when she mixed the casualness of teenage summers, the heartbreak of young love and the quirkyness of working in a colonial historical village at War with the Civil War historical village down the road. It’s genius.The setting, of course, is what really made this book stand out. Historical villages aren’t really something that appear in YA books. In fact, the last historical village I read about would have been Salem and that was in a Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV series book. I loved all the details Sales provided about the village and the different jobs the characters had. The main character, Chelsea, had job of wandering the graveyard and talking with tourist. How creepy and awesome.Speaking of Chelsea– I found her to be an honest and funny MC. Brokenhearted from a breakup and slightly upset that her best friend refuses to get a job at the mall with her, she finds herself where she has been every summer that she can remember– Essex. Oh, by the way, the ex-boyfriend has decided to work there too. But Chelsea troops through, trying to make the best of the situation. I loved the sarcasm in her tone and her witty remarks.

So with a great setting and main character, this book was good to begin with. But it gets better. There is a secret War. A secret War that leads to a secret love. Secret love that is kind of ridiculously secret because of a ridiculous War.

This was a fun and quick read and I really hope that Sales will write more novels like this. I wouldn’t mind reading about another summer in Essex