"light" reading
3 stories
The Summer Reunion (edited version) by wordsandescapism
wordsandescapism
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Andie Turner returns home for the summer when she's guaranteed a job as a camp counsellor with her old private school friends, who are unaware of her family secrets and the reason she left four months ago. After their ride to the camp breaks down, Andie is rescued by her ex-best friend Grayson Hadfield, who she learns will be spending the summer as her co-counsellor. When Andie reunites with her friends, she comes to realize things aren't they way they used to be when she left. Secrets unfold, problems arise, and the two enemies are forced to face the hard truths of their relationship and their fallout. But when an unexpected prize raises the stakes of her job and she finally addresses the fight with Grayson that ended their lifelong friendship, Andie has to decide whether the money is the only thing she came back for before she leaves at the end of summer.
The Palmer Pool by AnnaWestley
AnnaWestley
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[Wattys 2022 Winner!] Vanessa Brooks, an anxious and cynical seventeen year-old, discovers she can travel to the summer of 1953 through the run-down community pool in her rural Michigan town and risks her future as she falls for a boy who lives in the past. ****** On the last day of junior year, Vanessa Brooks joins her friends for a traditional jump into the city pool to celebrate the beginning of summer and the last year they plan to spend in Palmer, Michigan; a dead-end riverside town with an eerily abandoned historic main street and decaying Victorian mansions. But when she resurfaces her classmates have been replaced by girls in retro swimsuits and bathing caps and guys in thigh-baring briefs with cigarettes tucked behind their ears. When Pete Harrison, an unfamiliar face who seems somewhat familiar with hers, offers a dizzy and confused Vanessa a towel and a ride home, she discovers her house and family missing. She has somehow slipped into 1953, the year her grandparents graduated high school. Using the pool and vivid imaginings of her grandfather's memories, Vanessa continues to escape to 1953- and to Pete, who, despite his unaffected kindness and optimism, has a mysterious bad reputation around town. But as she dives deeper into the summer her grandparents fell in love, she finds herself unable to return to the present without venturing even further into the past to correct a mistake that threatens her family and future. *Content Warning: this story contains scenes of near drowning and other perils on the sea, swearing, smoking and alcohol use* This story is complete at ~90,000 words. Wattys Winner 2022- Catchiest Hook and Wild Card Shortlisted Wattys 2021 Featured on @WattpadTimeTravel Featured on @WattpadHistoricalRomance Featured on @TeenFiction Editor's choice list, December 2022, May 2023 Cover by @eva3382
The House Above the Sea by _jnicole_
_jnicole_
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When sixteen-year-old New York City native Neo O'Reilly is dropped off with his extended family in Hawaii for the summer, he's terribly out of his element. And with his militaristic aunt, over-excited older cousin, and a small town swimming with total strangers, he's not sure he'll ever get used to it. This plain, happy-go-lucky town just isn't for him. After all, Neo has a secret: He's taken something he shouldn't have. Yet, Neo realizes the town is not so simple as he thought when he meets Kit Kawamoto: a mute boy living in the abandoned house at the top of the hill. What follows is a whirlwind of secrets revealed, destinies questioned, and love realized. Two boys, a stolen item, and a curse: this is The House Above the Sea.