Scrambled Eggs at Midnight by Brad Barkley

Scrambled Eggs at Midnight (Hardcover)
by Brad Barkley
"My mother is a wench. It says so right on her W-2." Fifteen-year-old Calliope (Cal) is tired of sleeping in tents and following her free-spirited mother, who works at Renaissance fairs, selling handmade jewelry and serving drinks. She yearns for four walls, her father back in Texas, and a deeper sense of place, connection, and love. Then, while spending the summer in Asheville, North Carolina, Cal meets Elliot, also 15, whose father runs a Christian camp for overweight kids. Like David Levithan and Rachel Cohn's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2006), this coauthored love story unfolds in alternating chapters narrated in Cal and Elliot's hilarious, heart-tugging voices. Although the adult characters veer toward caricature, and the story's closing events feel a bit hasty and undeveloped, the authors raise a potentially routine summer romance into a refreshing, poetic, memorable story filled with the precise small details that nudge people toward love--from the sound of a necklace to the taste of homemade barbeque sauce.