Tracking Carina

Max is forced to move to Crescent City, California after his parents' nasty divorce involving an affair with a co-worker, a Rolling Stones t-shirt and a rubber duck. His dad labels the city a “fresh start” and a way to “bond with family” aka Max’s Aunt Litty, who he hasn't seen since he was four.

He's pretty sure there's going to be nothing to do, but then the house they live in smells like dead rat to a degree where Febreeze can't help. Then there's a journal written by his great uncle that was hidden in the closet of his room, and it has entries about an unnamed man, and his children, Carina and Leo, that Max can't help but want to decipher. Then there's his dad, who decides the outside of the house needs a new coat of paint.

If renovating a house he never wanted to live in wasn't enough, there's also the hostile old lady who lives down the road and throws pine cones at any passing human or vehicle. Max may just have a soap opera summer if we throw in a nosy grocery store owner named Natalia, an eccentric old man named Pyxis, and then a ridiculous amount of love: Love gone sour, unrequited love, familial love, platonic love, past love, and a love he might be able to call his own, that is, if it's written in the stars.

(or maybe if Max can manage to not screw it all up, because even though they seem to appear everywhere in his life, Max doesn't believe in that horoscope-fortune-teller-destiny BS)