What I learned on my summer vacation

Summer: Those 10 weeks that can change your life -- when your time is your own, when you might fall in love (or lust) for the first time, or first make your own money, whether it's with a lemonade stand or a job with a paycheck. The endless possibility (with the start of the next school year as a built-in time limit) offers a great form for drama, and young-adult novelists exploit it to great effect. Here are three new novels that each take place over the course of a single summer and leave their heroes altered in ways they couldn't have imagined a short while before.

By Sonja Bolle

June 28, 2009