The Year of Chasing Dreams

Gr 9 Up—Beginning a short time after The Year of Luminous Love (Delacorte, 2013) ends, this novel finds Ciana and Eden still reeling from the death of their close friend, Arie. Jon Mercer, Ciana's one-time love, offers her his heart, hoping for a fresh start. The months since Arie's death have been good to Eden, since she found a place and a family with Ciana and her mom, helping them with cooking and gardening. When Arie's mother invites the girls over to her house and gives them letters from their friend, they are stunned. For Eden, Arie offers her a possible way to contact Garret, the fun-loving Australian she met while the three friends were in Italy, and for Ciana, Arie gives her blessing to fully continue a relationship with Jon. While Eden finally connects with Garret and goes to visit him, Ciana continues working on her farm while also battling a local developer who wants to buy her property. Ciana's refusal leads to repercussions, and as she and Jon try to figure out how to deal with them, they grow closer together. This is a meandering, episodic book that relies too heavily on melodrama to be fully believable. The characters are less than fully developed and act more like young women in their early 20s rather than girls barely a year out of high school. The men are too perfect, and the plot flits from one crisis to the next. Fans of the previous book may leave satisfied, but others will be left wanting—Necia Blundy, formerly at Marlborough Public Library, MA