Customer Reviews
An Unfinished Love 
2008-08-20
This is an excellent growing-up novel for any teen. Jenna Vaughn is a senior at a small charter school in Utah who, on the outside, has it all - friends, a boyfriend, a great body etc.
What Jenna's friends don't know is her rocky childhood or the one boy who helped ease her loneliness.
Peppered throughout the book are memories, little things that Jenna remembers about Cameron Quick and her own childhood. She remembers the day he snuck a ring and a note into her lunchbox saying that he loved her. She remembers being teased by the popular kids and being called Fattifer. She remembers the week Cameron spent at her house and how hyped on sugar he got after eating chocolate chip pancakes. She remembers the dollhouse he built for her birthday and escaping from his father. She remembers compulsively stealing food.
One day Cameron doesn't come to school and then he's just not there for a few months. When Jennifer finally gets her courage to ask the teacher says that he's moved away and the kids at school tell her he has died. Either way Cameron is gone and he didn't even say goodbye. Eight years later on Jenna's birthday Cameron shows up again to place a birthday card and a cheap plastic ring in her mailbox.
Jenna is thrilled Cameron is alive and hurt that he never contacted her before this. She's never forgotten what he meant to her but she's not sure how to incorporate him into the new life she's built for herself.
There are aspects of the book I really related to and I really felt some heart-tugs for Jenna and Cameron. The book was well-written in almost a journal style with randomly interspersed memories and completely from Jenna's point of view. The reader only knows what Jenna knows and sometimes this is helpful and sometimes it hinders the whole Cameron picture since it's based on her childhood information.
I felt the end was unfinished but even that felt right after I thought about it. Jenna's mother said she always felt there was something unfinished about Jenna and Cameron and Jenna reflects later that that unfinished something was love. The book felt unfinished because their love is unfinished and that made me feel infinitely better about the ending and not really KNOWING how the two of them end up and if it all works out.
All in all an excellent book.
Enchanting YA Review: Sweethearts 
2008-07-08
SWEETHEARTS
SARA ZARR
Rating: 4 Enchantments
Jennifer Harris' life has undergone a serious transformation since the last time she saw her childhood best friend Cameron Quick. Gone is the shy, chubby outcast Jennifer and in her place is Jenna Harris, a teenager who is popular, happy and dating one of the most hottest guys in school. She is in fact everything that `Jenna' knows Jennifer never could be. But when her long lost friend Cameron suddenly reappears in her life, a friend she thought dead, both are faced with the stinging memories of the past that no transformation can truly leave behind.
Confronted by her past and the truth about Cameron's disappearance, Jenna struggles to come to terms with who she was then and who she is now, all while rebuilding one of the most important relationships of her life.
Full of emotion, SWEETHEARTS is a beautifully written story about the power of friendship and its ability to transform. Anyone who's struggled to fit in will be able to sympathize with Jennifer's desire to transform herself into someone else.
This is Ms. Zarr's second young adult novel.
Reviewed by Lisa
YA Director
Enchanting Reviews
February 2008
One of the Most Beautiful Stories Ever Written 2008-06-10
As a child, Jennifer Harris was a social outcast. She was nicknamed the Fattifier, because she was chubby, and made fun of for her lisp. Her only friend was another outcast named Cameron Quirk. They were always there for each other, and Cameron made everything bearable for Jennifer. And when he suddenly leaves without even saying goodbye, Jennifer is devastated. She thinks that he is dead, and no one tells her otherwise.
Now Jennifer Harris is Jenna Vaughn. Her mom got married and Jennifer changed her name and her personality. She's got friends, a first boyfriend, and a loving family, all that she could ever want. But she can never forget Cameron, and memories of him haunt her constantly. So when Cameron just shows up one day at school, everything is changed for her.
Throughout the story, Jenna has flashbacks to when she was Jennifer. And Jenna is not quite sure if she likes who she is now, and not sure if she wants to become Jennifer again. When Cameron was her best friend, she could be anyone she wanted to be, but as Jenna, her whole life seems to be a lie.
Sweethearts was a beautiful story about how the strongest bonds of friendship can span any distance or amount of time. It was one of the saddest and most romantic books I have read in a long time, and it made me cry. It was filled with such raw emotion that I felt I was inside Jenna's head, living her life with her. And while the ending isn't perfect, it is filled with contentment and hope.
I highly recommend Sweethearts to everyone, especially girls who can't let go of their childhood sweethearts. It was a beautiful story, and I am glad I took the time to read this incredible story. I hope all of you get to read it too.
[...]
Leaves it's mark in your heart 2008-06-03
What attracted me to this book initially was the cover (I saw it at the Little Brown stand in Bologna) - doesn't that frosted cookie look yummy? I also liked the jacket copy: "Sweethearts is about the power of memory, the bond of friendship, and the quiet resilience of our childhood hearts." So yeah, not exactly high concept, but I like to read "quieter" books every now and then too. And this one was just lovely.
High School Senior Jenna Vaughn has a cute boyfriend Ethan, tons of friends and seems to have it all together. But she still carries the scars of a solitary childhood - one in which her harried single mother didn't seem to have time for her and she only had one friend - fellow outcast and first love Cameron Quick who disappears one day without explanation.
When Cameron suddenly reappears years later, Jenna must come to terms with a traumatizing event in her past, confront her mother about her abandonment issues, and figure out what place Cameron, Ethan, and her new friends have in her life.
I found the story and Jenna's character arc to be very authentic. I have to admit, my first instinct was to scoff when I found out how relatively tame the "traumatic event" was - I mean it is very far from Cupcake Brown's childhood as she describes in her memoir A Piece of Cake (I urge you to check it for a great true story of triumph over adversity). Upon further reflection, I realized that within Jenna's scope of experience and from her narrow point of view, this one event was in fact earth-shattering.
The writing is top notch throughout and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a last chapter that is more beautifully expressed than this one. This book really makes you think about how certain people have touched your life and left a lasting mark in your heart.
Sweethearts 2008-05-04
Cameron and Jennifer were best friends and fellow rejects when they were younger, until Cameron mysteriously disappears. She is left alone, with no idea what happened and dealing with her vicious school bullies all by herself.
Now, 8 years later, she's reinvented herself as Jenna. She lost weight, moved to a new school, and became someone that she thought everyone would like. She's made new friends and a boyfriend, Ethan, who have no idea about her past or Cameron, or what they went through together.
Until Cameron comes back on her 17th birthday. He shows up just as quickly as he disappeared, and he's bringing back memories that Jenna had tried to forget, and invoking feelings she'd never imagined she'd feel.
This book was absolutely mesmerizing. I was hooked from the first page, and I remained entranced until the very end. I started it yesterday morning, and then I had to stay up late to finish it. It's been a long time since I've read a story with a mystery and intrigue and emotions that match this book. I could really understand what Jenna was going through, and Cameron was such a unique and dynamic character that I couldn't help but be drawn to him. All of the characters, in fact, were unique and original. I know that this will be a book that I pick up a year from now and want to reread. I'm not likely to forget how amazing Sweethearts was for a long time.
Loved this book! 2008-04-30
As children, Jennifer Harris and Cameron Quick were both social outcasts. They were also one another's only friend. So when Cameron disappears without warning, Jennifer thinks she's lost the only person who will ever understand her. Now in high school, Jennifer has been transformed. Known as Jenna, she's popular, happy, and dating, everything "Jennifer" couldn't be---but she still can't shake the memory of her long-lost friend.
When Cameron suddenly reappears, they are both confronted with memories of their shared past and the drastically different paths their lives have taken.
From the National Book Award nominated author of
Story of a Girl, Sweethearts is a story about the power of memory, the bond of friendship, and the quiet resilience of our childhood hearts.
This one stays with you... 2008-04-17
I read Zarr's Story of a Girl and really liked it so I ordered Sweethearts with the hope that it wouldn't disappoint. Sweethearts is just as good, if not better. It is a quick, engrossing read, but not a simplistic book; Zarr is dealing with some complicated issues, and though they are quite sensitive, they serve to open up feelings in the characters that are universal and relatable. Zarr has the rare ability to create characters that are real people with real problems. She doesn't rely on hackneyed stereotypes or trite situations to convey the uncomfortable and confusing emotions of young adulthood. Her adult characters are a gift--so often in stories directed at teens the adults are portrayed as clueless airheads. Not here. I look forward to Zarr's next novel and would recommend them to any young adult, or old adult for that matter!
Richie's Picks SWEETHEARTS 2008-04-03
What is a friend? Who are your real friends?
Nowadays, we all have MySpace friends and listserve friends, IM friends and texting friends, in addition to our traditional school friends, neighborhood friends, and those we acquire over the years through a variety of life experiences.
For me, there was a girl with an abutting backyard with whom I played well when I was a preschooler, long-lost buddies in black and white photos from my earliest school days, the tall guy who befriended me on the playground following our family's move in the middle of my third grade year (I still know and visit him.), and a boy from Smithtown I met at daycamp with whom I remember walking with our arms around each other one summer. There were study friends and Boy Scout friends and the members of all the various extracurricular and social groups to which I belonged during high school. Being as old as I am, the list of old friends goes on and on and on.
But we might ask ourselves: How many of those friends "for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul"? And to how many people have we been such a friend?
"There are things I want to remember about Cameron Quick that I can't entirely, like the pajamas he wore when he used to sleep over, and his favorite cereal, or how it felt to hold his hand as we walked home from school in third grade. I want to remember exactly how we became friends in the first place, a definite starting line that I can visit again and again. He's a story I want to know from page one.
"My brain doesn't seem to work that way. Most specific things about Cameron are fuzzy -- the day we met, how we got so close, exact words we said to each other. There are only moments, snapshots, pieces of a puzzle. Once in a while I feel them right in my hand, real as the present, but usually it's more like I'm grasping for vapor. I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there's stuff you don't know, can't know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I'm convinced there are parts of myself hidden inside them."
As an impoverished elementary student in thrift store garb, Jennifer Harris is shunned by the schoolmates who tauntingly call her "Fattifer." Her closet eating habits -- which include frequently stealing food from schoolmates and stores -- are clearly the product of regularly being left to fend for herself by her single mom who is forever running between work and nursing school.
The one person in the world Jennifer can always depend on is her only friend and fellow outcast Cameron Quick. But Cameron has his own problems and secrets, including a nightmarish father as Jennifer learns first-hand that horrific day -- her ninth birthday -- when she visits Cameron's house to collect a present he has made for her.
Soon thereafter, Cameron and his family disappear and the eventual rumor at school is that he has moved away and then died. Jennifer's mother acknowledges that the rumor is, indeed, fact.
"The two questions came into my head again: How could you have left me? Why didn't you say good-bye?"
Eight years later, Jennifer Harris has reinvented herself into Jenna Vaughn, a teen who has determinedly shed her excessive weight and her former lack of composure. Her mother's remarriage has cleared up the former problems of poverty. Jenna attends a charter school where she has popular friends and a popular boyfriend: ("Sometimes I worried that I should be feeling more for him than I actually did, but I tended to push those worries aside and focus on how it felt to be part of it, to be seen by everyone as worthy of couplehood").
Eight years after she last sees him, Cameron Quick suddenly and inexplicably reappears in Jenna/Jennifer's life just as precipitously as he had disappeared from it. The presence of Cameron will compel her to determine whether she is Jenna or Jennifer.
I was thoroughly caught up in the tale of SWEETHEARTS, a story of a once-in-a-lifetime friendship and what has befallen the two long-lost friends as they pursued their radically divergent paths through childhood and adolescence. It is a book that sure has me contemplating relationships with friends past and present.
So dark, yet so hopeful 2008-03-21
Zarr's second book (Sweerthearts) is nothing like her Story of a Girl, except for an amazing level of excellence. She has profound understanding of the interior, hungry places of childhood and adolescence as well as what it takes to heal and fill them up again.
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr 2008-02-24
Jennifer Harris is the outcast at her school, being called names all the time like Fattifer. But there's at least one good thing about school- her only friend Cameron. One day though, Cameron disappears, supposedly dead, and Jennifer has to somehow move on. Fast forward eight years later, and Jennifer Harris has transformed into Jenna Vaughn (the last name came from her mom remarrying), a completely popular senior at the start of her last year of high school. What happens though when former best friend Cameron comes back, causing the new Jenna to be confronted by their entwined past...?
In this fantastic follow-up to the amazing debut novel "Story of a Girl", Zarr does it again: creating believable characters and coming up with an interesting premise. The book itself is just a great read, keeping the reader turning the pages, wanting to know more and more about these characters and their shared past. The details in the story are just simply great too, revealing little intricacies of the characters without outright telling the reader. Sweethearts is highly recommended, as well as Story of a Girl!
