A "Sweetheart" of a book

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr (Little Brown, 2008) is a heart warming story, beautifully written and one of the best YA books I've read this past year. Childhood friends Jennifer and Cameron support each other as best friends in third grade and later meet again as teenagers. As a youngster, Jennifer is lonely, overweight, outcast at school, left alone for long stretches by her single mother who works and studies to become a nurse. Cameron is different also, suffering an abusive father and constant fear his younger siblings will also be abused. This amazing story starts when Jennifer's mother has married a kind and caring man, finished her nursing degree, and the family has moved into a better neighborhood. Jennifer is no longer Jennifer. She is now Jenna, thin, beautiful, popular at school. Yet she longs to have friends who truly "see" her. Sara Zarr demonstrates masterful writing in this highly realistic novel. The construction of her story is unique: the back story (intense and slowly revealed) written in first person present tense; the main story of Jenna as a teen is written in first person past tense. The reader gets little bits and pieces of what happened to Jennifer and Cameron when they were nine years old that caused Cameron to disappear out of Jennifer's life. The main story holds attention as well as Jenna fights with her created persona and breaks away from her more superficial friends to once again become a part of Cameron's life.