Review by Booklist Review
Jude and Florence are students at the Harbor Arts Camp, where they meet by chance and are immediately infatuated. Readers learn that both are gifted: Jude at photography, and Florence at dancing, though her future as a dancer is cloudy due to an eye condition called nystagmus, which affects depth perception and balance. One night, they walk to a nearby town and eat pizza and donuts and go bowling--simple, ordinary things that help them bond. Near the end of the evening, Florence suggests that, like characters in the movie Before Sunrise, they meet again the following year and, in the meantime, have no contact whatsoever. Jude reluctantly agrees, though the year apart is hellish. And though they happily rendezvous at the camp a year later, their brief encounter ends badly when there is a misunderstanding. This character-driven novel is partly in verse (the other parts--their conversations--are prose), and it is beautifully written ("listening / to the nocturne of crickets"). The point of view shifts between the highly empathic characters as readers get to know them--thankfully, since, at 400 pages, this is almost too much of a good thing presented at a sometimes deliberate pace. The characterization redeems any faults, however, offering readers a memorable experience.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
High schoolers Florence, a dancer, and Jude, a photographer, meet while participating in the traditional "sunrise night," the last day of art camp, during which campers stay out all night. Despite the pair's individual challenges--Florence worries that a worsening eye condition will end her ability to dance and Jude struggles with heightened anxiety in the aftermath of his parents' divorce--they make each other laugh, and think, and hope. They know there's something between them, but since Jude has a girlfriend, and he and Florence live nowhere near each other, they agree not to talk again until the next sunrise night. Coauthors Cavallaro (Manifest) and Zentner (In the Wild Light) employ spot-on banter to deliver a romance teeming with an ambiance of endless possibility on the precipice of devastating heartbreak. As the teens bond over their shared love and conviction for their craft, between them spins a love story that is truly suspenseful. The will-they-won't-they plot, ferried along by the duo's alternating perspectives, will have readers struggling between racing toward the ending and lingering over the luminous verse. Protagonists read as white. Ages 13--up. Agents: (for Cavallaro) Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary; (for Zentner) Charlie Olsen, InkWell Literary. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two teens meet at an arts camp in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and form a lasting bond. Florence, a dancer with nystagmus, an eye condition that affects her depth perception, is working through her grief that she may not be able to continue dancing when she meets Jude, a photographer. The closing tradition at Harbor Arts Camp is called Sunrise Night, an evening in which the teens are permitted to leave the camp to hang out in the surrounding town--all night if they wish (with check-ins). Jude is honest right away about having a girlfriend, but as the two move from one eccentric small-town venue to another, they realize they're undeniably attracted to one another. They vow to meet up again at Harbor Arts the following summer but in the meantime to return home to Wisconsin (Florence) and Tennessee (Jude) and avoid all communication: "Total silence for a year." In alternating entries comprising both verse and short prose passages from each of their perspectives, Florence and Jude's story is told as a sort of comedy of errors taking place on three Sunrise Nights over three successive years. This protracted, slow-burn romance works thanks to their frenetic, philosophical, wildly funny, and poignant voices, which will hook readers from the start, even if the verse sections may strike some as a little too earnest at times. Florence and Jude are cued white. A smart, swoony, and witty romance. (Romance. 13-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
