Once again, Lincoln Pearce gives us a great book with Big Nate as the protagonist. All of our favorites are here, Mrs. Godfrey (is Nate really allergic? Or is there something else going on?), Gina, Teddy, and Francis. There's even a newbie to detention that Nate tries to take under his wing with somewhat... dubious... results.
Nya Jerami and Johan von Braustein are both characters we've met previously in this series. Nya Jerami is from Thesolo and is most known in her country for her father's attempt to poison the heroine in the first book. Johan is literally a red-headed stepchild, mostly known for being a party prince whose mother had a great romance with the king but then fell tragically ill. Both of them are scarred by their pasts. Nya spends almost as much time on dating games as she does in real life and Johan hides his kind heart behind a hard-partying exterior, mostly so he can protect his brother. But both their situations are coming to a head. And it ends with a fake engagement. Well, that's toward the first third of the book so there's really a lot that comes after including some huge revelations about Nya's father and the brother that Johan is trying to protect.
We get to see our favorite characters in the Phoebe and Marigold series: Dakota, Max, and the others. This time Phoebe is signed up for her school's talent show and works on several songs. She also goes to Max's birthday. They also get to go... bowling.
Esther and her stepdad are driving up a treacherous mountain road so that she can go to art camp. They end up off the road and walking to the camp. But the camp they end up at isn't an art camp; it's a math camp. Some of the kids are okay with them being there but one girl is really upset. Because of the storms, Esther is stuck. She doesn't want to make the best of the situation but she sort of has to.
I liked that this book talked about finding spirituality in different ways - horseback riding, fly fishing, painting, etc. This is definitely a different way at looking at Christianity but not entirely new - I've read other books about finding your spirituality outside of the church with sort of a sliding irreverence. This one definitely had more footnotes which I liked. I would have liked more scripture and I didn't ever see how the drinks were supposed to be connected.
I got the 22 page sample from NetGalley but even that was enough to know that this is going to delight regular readers and those new to the series alike. Mooch and Earl are not very excited about summer starting so they're figuring out ways to exist whether being in the pool, enjoying a can of cool whip cream, or (somewhat accidentally) sleeping on a popsicle.
I just got the excerpt of this book where Stevie from Honey Badger Chronicles book 1 and Shen from the Pride books are set up as the romantic interests. Shen has been set up as a super laid-back, continuously bamboo eating panda shifter. Stevie is a highly strung tiger-badger hybrid who is also ridiculously smart. The beginning of the book has Stevie freaking out about the number of bears in her kitchen while her sisters (normally the only ones who can calm her down) are not in the area. It's going to be up to Shen to help figure it out.