Bittersweet, funny, and achingly honest, Five Summers is a story of friendship, love, and growing up that is perfect for fans of Ann Brashare's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants   and Judy Blume's  Summer Sisters.    Four best friends, five summers of camp memories   Emma, Skylar, Jo and Maddie have all come back to camp for a weekend of tipsy canoe trips to the island, midnight skinny dipping in the lake, and an epic game of capture the flag--boys versus girls. But the weekend isn't quite as sunwashed as they'd imagined as the memories come flooding back...   The summer we were nine : Emma was branded “Skylar’s friend Emma” by the infamous Adam Loring . . . The summer we were ten: Maddie realized she was too far into her lies to think about telling the truth . . . The summer we were eleven : Johanna totally freaked out during her first game of Spin the Bottle . . . The summer we were twelve : Skylar’s love letters from her boyfriend back home were exciting to all of us—except Skylar . . . Our last summer together: Emma and Adam almost kissed. Jo found out Maddie’s secret. Skylar did something unthinkable...and whether we knew it then or not, five summers of friendship began to fall apart.  A young adult book with a friendship story that will last long after the last s'more is gone.     The JEMS—Jo, Emma, Maddie, and Skylar—are summer-camp besties from New Hampshire’s Camp Nedoba, which features all the usual summer camp staples: T-shirts and cargo shorts; bikinis and bandannas; waffles and bug juice; crushes and betrayals; a camp director who offers a significant but benign adult presence; and the quintessential friendship pact, replete with rules and rules about how to follow the rules. Emma is the initial narrator, but Jo, Maddie, and Skylar are promptly fleshed out with backstories from their noncamp lives. The challenge for the reader is the mix of brief chapters that shift among the four characters over a seven-year period, following the girls from age 10 to their reunion at 17, three years after their last camp session spent together. Capturing the campfire glow of adolescent summers spent in cabins, in the woods, and on the lake, the sweet rewards in LaMarche’s debut novel are the moments that reveal the beauty of true friendships that have everlasting promise. Grades 7-12. --Gail Bush "Vivid, warm, familiar and bittersweet, Five Summers is a welcome escape, full of moments that linger beyond the final pages." -- Jodi Lynn Anderson — Author of NY Times Bestseller PEACHES Una LaMarche is a journalist and blogger whose work has appeared in the  New York Observer  and the  Huffington Post . She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their new baby. Read her blog at www.sassycurmudgeon.com and follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sassycurmudgeon.