Half-siblings Hunter and Ashlin have been friends with Chance since they were kids and first started to spend summers in Maine with their father. Chance is the glue that bonds the three together, despite the fact that Hunter and his sister don’t really know all that much about him.
I knew all the things about Chance that mattered most. Chance was strangeness and whimsy in human form.
Chance was our summer.
We didn’t see him or talk to him through the winter, but when we arrived for summer vacation, the three of us came together like we’d never been apart.
This year things are different, though. Hunter and Ashlin have decided to take a gap year and spend it with their father, who is still recovering from a workplace accident (he’s a cop and was shot; Hunter and his sister were kept with their mothers and away from their dad for a couple years).
So, now they’re back in Maine with their dad and each other…and with no way to contact Chance. When they finally do track him down, they discover that Chance hasn’t been 100% honest with them. For one thing, his house “is nothing like what Chance described.” His parents are clearly not glamorous jetsetters, either. Instead, his mother looks “like she cuts [her own hair], and her face is gaunt and tired. She’s wearing a gray men’s bathrobe over a nightgown and pink slippers that have seen better days.” Chance’s father is “broad-shouldered and stone-faced, with a jaw that hasn’t seen a razor in a few days.”
But Chance is the same. And not the same.
Kelley York’s YA novel Made of Stars captures that time between innocence and experience. These three teens have a shared history made more complicated by an unexpected love triangle. But Made of Stars isn’t a straight-up love story. When someone turns up dead, Chance is implicated and Hunter and Ashlin set out to prove his innocence. Turns out, even that is more complicated and dangerous than the siblings could have imagined.
Enjoyable read.
The Ludic Reader 