I just finished reading the National Book Award Winner What I Saw and How I lied by Judy Blundell. This is one of those books that stays with you even after you finish reading it. There are so many things to think and wonder about. It is the best book that I have read this year—of course, as you can tell from my blog, I haven’t read that many books this year!This book is set in 1947 right after World War II. Evie’s step-father Joe has just returned from the war and started his new appliance business. Joe refuses to talk about the war and neither Evie, nor her mother, push him. However, one day he starts to get strange phone calls and he tells someone on the phone that they have the “wrong Joe Spooner.” Soon after, he loads Evie and her mother in the car and they head to Florida for a vacation. Evie has never been outside of New York and she is excited. When they arrived in Palm Beach, things are mostly boarded up, but they find an open hotel and begin to enjoy their vacation.
All is great until handsome 23-year-old Peter Coleridge shows up. He was a soldier that served with Joe in Europe, but Joe doesn’t seem to want anything to do with him. However, he immediately charms 16-year-old Evie who promptly falls in love with him. She becomes so absorbed in her feelings for him that she ignores the secrets and lies that seem to fallow him around. But when a tragedy strikes, Evie discovers that she must choose between her family and her love for Peter. Suddenly nothing is what it seems and she doesn’t know who to believe: her devotion to Peter? Her wonderful step-father? Or her mother who has been the one constant in her life? Her choices could destroy her and her family forever!

In Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks, Odella's mother harbors guilt from an accident that happened when she was only 16 years old. Sally and three of her friends drove their car out on Mistik Lake and fell through the ice. Everyone was killed but Sally. The people of Mistik Lake say that it wasn't her fault; that she wasn't even driving, but Sally still feels the guilt and finds herself running from everything. When Odella is 16, her mother finally runs away from her family moves to Iceland with her lover. This book is how Odella learns to live with that abandonment, but it is also about why Sally feels the need to always run away from love. 

