Cathy Price, nearly sixteen, had just succeeded at getting Dan Stedman to give her a ride home from school when her family told her she was going away with them to Chatfield for the summer. Her best friend, Samantha, suggested that she have a summer fling, to practice for when she saw Dan again in the fall. Once in Chatfield, however, she found out that Dan was in Chatfield for the summer too, changing all of her holiday romance plans. Not only that, but when their parents suddenly became good friends, Cathy saw a lot of Dan-especially when she started to baby-sit his little sister.

One day on the beach, some young girls that had been harassing Dan saw the two of them together. When kissing Cathy successfully scared the girls away, Cathy suggested that Dan needed a girlfriend for the summer to keep them away-and that she should pretend to be that girlfriend.

Cathy still wanted to get Dan's attention for real. After she tried to appear grown up, he kissed her on the beach, but Cathy felt that Dan wanted more than what she was ready to give. When Cathy decided to stop trying to impress him, she and Dan had a really good time together.

But their last week of summer was spoiled by the arrival of Lisa Kendall, who had her eyes set on Dan and was determined to break Dan and Cathy up. When Cathy caught Dan and Lisa kissing in the rose garden, a jealous Cathy got involved with Lisa's older, Harvard-bound brother Steve, determined to still have her own summer romance. But although she thought that she could handle Steve, he was secretly conspiring with Lisa to drive her and Dan apart, and the cycle of misunderstandings and jealous flirting went further than she had expected.

The appealing and sympathetic characters struggle valiantly through misunderstandings and confusion, and I identified all too well with Cathy's anxiety as she tried to ascertain Dan's true feelings for her. She started their "relationship" as a ploy to rescue Dan from marauding 10-year-olds, masking her true feelings, but was it just a game to him or did he feel something for her?

Summer Replacement captured the essence of the freedom and sweetness of teenage summer romances in an engaging and believable story.

Reviewed By: Melinda Stanners
© June 2004