Wittlinger's (Hard Love
) ambitious novel opens just after artistic Chloe and Julian become smitten with each other during a college preview weekend. Readers learn about their lives and interests through e-mails, instant messages, postcards and letters—Chloe even sends Julian a mix CD—and the two plan to meet again towards the end of summer (when Julian hopes to be a finalist in Boston for a vocal competition). But complications arise; Julian sends roses that arrive as Chloe and her boyfriend pose for prom pictures at her house, causing their breakup, and when she goes away to be a counselor at an arts camp, she hooks up with a coworker. As their rendezvous approaches, Chloe nervously writes that she'll "be the one who's bitten her fingernails down to the knuckles." The author builds upon an enticing premise—the "strange changes that seem to keep happening during the weird summer between high school and college"—but more remarkably she breathes life into so many characters through their letters. Family and friends also write to the protagonists and each other, sharing their own problems and offering advice. Chloe and Julian's fate may be fairly obvious, and Chloe's mother's confession about her marriage's troubled past seems forced, but most readers will applaud the author for imagining—and maintaining—such a complete world. Ages 12-up. (July)
