Friday Memes: Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Rob

I eat breakfast with my father every morning.

Well, I eat. He sits in his wheelchair and stares in whichever direction Mom has pointed him. If I'm lucky, all his drool stays in his mouth. If he's lucky, the sunlight doesn't fall across his eyes.

Today, neither of us is very lucky.

Friday 56:

Maegan

A breath of time passes, and then Rob says, "I know who your father is."

Oh. Right. I knew that. And I know why I knew it.

Rob's voice turns dry again, but there's no real humor in it. "I'm sure you know who mine is, too." He takes a sip of his coffee.

This week I am spotlighting a recent addition to my review stack. Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer was in a surprise package from Bloomsbury. Here is the description from Amazon:

New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer pens a new emotionally compelling story about two teens struggling in the space between right and wrong.

When his dad is caught embezzling funds from half the town, Rob goes from popular lacrosse player to social pariah. Even worse, his father's failed suicide attempt leaves Rob and his mother responsible for his care.

Everyone thinks of Maegan as a typical overachiever, but she has a secret of her own after the pressure got to her last year. And when her sister comes home from college pregnant, keeping it from her parents might be more than she can handle.

When Rob and Maegan are paired together for a calculus project, they're both reluctant to let anyone through the walls they've built. But when Maegan learns of Rob's plan to fix the damage caused by his father, it could ruin more than their fragile new friendship . . .

In her compulsively readable storytelling, Brigid Kemmerer pens another captivating, heartfelt novel that asks the question: Is it okay to do something wrong for the right reasons?