BOOKS
From Issue #20
Summertime and the Readin's Easy
By Linda Nguyen, Sam Thompson and Sydnia Yu

Stock up on some of our picks that promise to make your summer sizzle!

The Cure for Crushes (And Other Deadly Plagues) By Karen Rivers (Polestar/Raincoast Books) Haley should be happy to have a loving boyfriend, a dad with a new job and a chance to organize her prom. But for a neurotic, accidentprone teen, Haley’s daily, and often hourly, diary entries reveal it’s more complicated when you factor in old crushes, dad’s younger girlfriend and mean-spirited friends. When she’s not overanalysing her latest fiasco buying condoms or accidentally poisoning her boyfriend, Haley writes endless lists, stating why people drive her crazy and questioning why her boyfriend even likes her. -SY

The Sex Doctors in the Basement: True Stories from a Semi-Celebrity Childhood By Molly Jong-Fast (Villard) If your mother is famous, but not so famous, how much can you get away with? Molly Jong’s mom is the famed feminist and erotica writer Erica Jong, and that is only the beginning. This memoir is a collection of hilarious stories of her crazy grandparents, aunts, mother’s boyfriends and an assortment of weird friends her mom attracts (thus the sex doctors in the basement). Add to this, Molly’s own love for chocolate, watching TV and, later in life, sourcing drugs from creative outlets. With Joan Collins as a babysitter and childhood friends like supermodel Sophie Dahl, Molly lives to tell tales from the underbelly of glamour. -ST

Maya Running By Anjali Banerjee (Random House) Ever make a wish? What if all your wishes came true, for real? Maya wishes she wasn’t Indian anymore, that she didn’t have her braces, and that Jamie Klassen, her school heartthrob, would just look her way. But most importantly, she wishes she wasn’t so different from the rest of her friends in Manitoba. Maya’s cousin Pinky comes to visit her from India, and she’s pretty, funny, and exotic. When Jamie starts falling for Pinky, Maya decides to borrow Pinky’s statue of the Hindu God, Ganesh the Granter of Wishes, and to her shock, her wishes start to come true. Ganesh grants Maya’s wish to remove obstacles from her path so she can be happy. Pinky gets sent back to India and Jamie starts obsessing about her instead. Maya’s braces are gone and she turns into one of the most popular girls at school. But Maya soon realizes this isn’t really what she wished for. To reverse her wishes, she first has to learn that you can’t change yourself on the outside until you realize who you really are on the inside. - LN

The Au Pairs By Melissa de la Cruz (Simon & Schuster) When three girls agree to be au pairs for one of NYC’s illustriously wealthy families, the task of babysitting four children is a minor sacrifice to gain access to the Hamptons’ “it” spots and high-class clientele. Jacqui ditches the crew to rekindle an old flame and Eliza books it to pretend she’s still a rich snob while Mara picks up the slack to deter the older brother’s advances. It’s only when the trio are all left broken-hearted that they realize they are more than just bikiniclad beauties. -SY

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