Fake Skating by Lynn Painter

 

“From play dates on the playground to sneaking into movie theaters, Dani and Alec were inseparable as kids. Until Dani moved away. Years later, Dani is back in Minnesota, and excited to reconnect with the nerdy and comforting Alec. But teenage Alec is NOTHING like the boy she remembers. He's the hockey STAR in a town where hockey players are worshipped as gods – and he loves it. 

When one thing leads to another and Dani and Alec find themselves thrown together and playing the role of boyfriend and girlfriend, “complicated” becomes an understatement. In this Minnesota town, hockey may rule, but romance is about to take its place.” - taken from Goodreads.

Alec and Dani were the best of friends for one month every summer in Minnesota when she and her mother came to visit her grandparents until they weren't. Now five years later, Dani and her mother have moved back to town to live with her Grandpa after her parents divorce. Uncomfortable to see one another after a perceived slight by the other, Dani and Alec agree to fake date in order to improve an unjust reputation for Alec that may bring his hockey dreams to a crashing end. As time passes the two begin to realize that what is happening between the two of them may not be fake at all. Can Alec and Danny find their way over their past hurts to find their happily ever after. Dani’s grandpa had to be my favorite character in this book.

Visit Lynn Painter’s website.

Dead To You by Lisa McMann

“Some memories are better left untouched.”

At the age of seven, Ethan De Wilde and his younger brother Blake were playing in the front yard when a car pulled up. Two strange men call Ethan over and he gets in. They drive away and Ethan is not to be found after his parents and the community conducts an exhaustive search. It turns out he went to live with a woman named Ellen who couldn’t have children. They scarped out an existence until she wasn’t able to keep him anymore and left him in a group home in Nebraska. Ethan lived there for a short time before eking out a merger existence on the streets. After spending time at the public library researching missing children, Ethan finds the website his parents set up to search for him. He makes the phone call and his family comes to pick him up.

Things have changed in the last nine years. His sister Grace, the replacement baby, is now six and is just as confused as Ethan over his sudden reappearance. Back home in Minnesota, Ethan has trouble remembering anything about his life prior or his abduction and steadfastly refuses to talk about Ellen. Blake is angry with him over not only his leaving but his abrupt reentry and subsequent turmoil her has brought to everyone’s life.

Struggling to fit into his old life, Ethan is just looking for another escape. Very few of the pieces of his former life are making sense and it seems that once again he is tearing his family apart. Why did Ethan leave with complete strangers nine years ago? What happened to him during the nine years he was gone? Why is Ethan having difficulty trying to recall even the simplest of memories about his life before his abduction? What really happened to Ethan De Wilde?

Visit Lisa McMann’s website.