review of Fixing Delilah

Fixing Delilah
by Sarah Ockler
Young Adult fiction
Pub date December 15, 2010

I was a little nervous to read Fixing Delilah--not because I thought it would be bad, but because Sarah Ockler's first book (Twenty Boy Summer) struck such a perfect balance between sad and sweet and honest. I wanted to like Fixing Delilah just as much, but I didn't know if that was possible.

Delilah Hannaford is a good girl, but lately she's been doing all the things that good girls don't: sneaking around with Finn, her not-boyfriend; (accidentally) stealing lipstick; getting bad grades; and lying to her mother. As a result, Delilah gets to spend the whole summer packing up her grandmother's house for an estate sale. Returning to the lake house brings back the argument that divided her family eight years ago--and took her away from her friend Patrick. No one seems to want to talk about what happened that summer, but Delilah doesn't think she can just let it go.

The things that happen to Delilah in this book never happened to me, but I felt as though they had. It was actually hard to read at points because I had such empathy with Delilah. Even though the plot, characters, and setting are completely different from Twenty Boy Summer, Ockler's books share one major similarity: they are emotionally pitch-perfect. I can't imagine a better follow-up to her debut novel.