A sweet romantic story about donuts, food trucks, family, and first loves. It's easy to look at high school senior Oscar Olsson and think: lost . He hates school, struggles to read, and wants nothing to do with college. But Oscar is anything but lost---he knows exactly what he wants and exactly how to get it. Oscar and Farfar, the Swedish grandfather who's raised him, run a food truck together selling rullekebab and munkar, and Oscar wants to finish school so he can focus on the food truck full-time. It's easy to look at Mary Louise (Lou for short) Messinger and think: driven . AP everything, valedictorian in her sights, and Ivy league college aspirations. When Lou hijacks Oscar's carefully crafted schedule of independent studies and blocks of time in the Culinary Lab, Oscar is roped into helping Lou complete her over-ambitious, resume-building service project-reducing food waste in Central Adams High School. While Lou stands to gain her Girl Scout Gold Award, Oscar will be faced with a mountain of uneaten school apples and countless hours with a girl he can't stand. With the finish line in sight, a relationship he never expected, and festival season about to begin (for good), the unthinkable happens, and Oscar's future is anything but certain. Gr 9 Up—High school senior Oscar Olsson is ready for school to be over. A budding chef, he loves working with his Swedish grandfather, Farfar, in their food truck that features Swedish delicacies. A future working with his grandfather is all that Oscar can see on the horizon. When a teacher suggests that he spend half the day working in the school's culinary lab as an assistant, Oscar seizes the opportunity. Everything is great until Lou Messinger shows up with a project that involves Oscar cooking foods made from untouched apples from the cafeteria. Oscar doesn't like Lou. She's smart, college-bound, and never does anything academically wrong, which is in sharp contrast to him. However, Oscar finds himself enjoying her company, and after Farfar invites Lou to work at the food truck, their relationship begins to develop. This novel is more than a love story. The cast of characters surrounding Oscar and Lou are richly diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation and there are detailed descriptions of cooking and baking that will make readers hungry. Social justice issues, such as hunger, drug addiction, and white supremacy are threaded seamlessly into the plot. The short chapters gradually reveal the backstory of the main characters and the story builds with some suspense and ends on a satisfying note. Lou's ethnicity isn't specified. VERDICT A lovely story that many will enjoy. Libraries that purchased Reck's A Short History of the Girl Next Door, will want to consider adding this to their collections.—Anne Jung-Mathews, Plymouth State Univ., NH “Delightful, with deep, delicious layers and a savory-sweet ending. I gobbled it up.” —Wendelin Van Draanen, award-winning author of Flipped and The Running Dream “This book is a literal warm hug for your soul. Reck’s storytelling is an immersive sensory experience and his characters burrow into your heart. Not only will this book make you hungry, it will fill you with joy and leave you wishing to revisit Hej Hej, Oscar and his Farfar time and again.” —Erin Hahn, author of  You’d Be Mine  and  More Than Maybe "A big-hearted look at the way food, love, and family are inextricably linked. This book is a bittersweet tale of following your passion, finding deep connections in unlikely places, and learning you can do more than you even imagined. It is as warm and satisfying as a donut straight from the fryer!" —Peter Bognanni, author of  Things I'm Seeing Without You "It's been a long time since a book's final sentence filled my heart to bursting, but this one did it. Disarmingly poignant and full of warmth, Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love is a compelling story of found family, delicious food, and all the ways we carry our ever-evolving dreams with us." —Nina Moreno, author of  Don't Date Rosa Santos   "Likable, well-rounded characters keep readers turning pages.”  —Kirkus Reviews Jared Reck is also the author of A Short History of the Girl Next Door . He lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania, where he's an eighth-grade Language Arts teacher. Learn more about Jared on Twitter at @ReckJ. Chapter One Goat Cheese Poutine: The Promised Land I still smelled like a deep fryer when I rolled out of bed at 6:00 a.m. that first Saturday in September. We’d been up late the night before, the last Friday Food Trucks of the season at Springettsbury Park, and we’d been slammed—­the line snaking from our window to the other side of the gravel parking lot for a good hour, the deep fryer spitting out droplets of oil like angry hornets every time I dropped in another batch of munkar. Swedish for donuts. I’d already been in school nearly two weeks by that point, it already sucked, and now, with Saturday’s festival in downtown Y