See You On a Starry Night: 08/16/20

See You On a Starry Night by Lisa Schroeder is a middle grade novel about returning to your roots when it's time to start over. Juliette and her older sister are moving into a beach bungalow in Mission Beach, San Diego, after their parents have decided to separate.

On their first day there, Juliette meets a neighbor, Emma, on the beach. Together the two toss messages in bottles into the sea. Their hope is to start a conversation with someone elsewhere in the world. One of their bottles washes back onto the shore, unbeknownst to them, and the person who found it writes back and suggests that they start a Starry Beach Club.

But! Before this mysterious person agrees to meet in person, they want the girls to do one good deed. The remainder of the book is primarily their attempts to do a good deed. Those attempts also introduce the rest of the neighborhood.

It's a sweet little story, though Mission Beach doesn't feel like the Mission Beach I remember. It feels more like Pacific Beach, which sits just north of Mission Beach. It's a small quibble and doesn't affect the overall plot. It's just something that might jump out at San Diegan readers.

There's a sequel: Wish on All the Stars (2019).

Five stars

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