Scrambled Eggs at Midnight

by Brad Barkley & Heather Hepler

After reading 19 Minutes last month, I was in serious need of light-hearted stuff. So I raided the Young Adult shelf!

This book is about two teenagers with tortured relationships with their parents, and how they break free from them. Eliot is the son of a successful Christian fat camp director, who feels his father has become less and less real the more wealthy he becomes. Cali (short for Calliope) is the daughter of a wandering artist who (according to the book's blurb) "seems less and less interested in being a parent"; Cali is straining hard toward planting roots and creating a home.

They meet one summer because Eliot's family's Christian fat camp is near the grounds of the medieval fair where Cali's mom sells her jewelry and takes on roles to make money before moving on to some place new.

From the beginning, there is an intense connection between Eliot and Cali. But this isn't your typical teen romance (did you ever read the Sweet Dreams series as a teenager?--I loved the first 40! But their plots were very straightforward: girl meets boy, girl & boy like each other but there are obstacles to overcome OR one of them dislikes the other intensely until some epiphany makes him or her change his/her opinion and they live happily till college or they outgrow each other, which ever comes first).

Because of their particular circumstances--Cali's mom yanking her up and away from her dad and making her live a gypsy life since she was about 8 or 9, Eliot feeling more and more distant from his dad and seeing the same thing happen to his mom--it seems that Cali and Eliot are meant to be each other's rocks, anchors, safeties. But each of them is also incredibly bright and self-aware, which makes me think that their relationship could be that rare thing in this world--a childhood romance that will grow with them and survive.