Review: Blue Sky Days
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 1, 2012
Blue Sky Days by Marie LandryAsin B006U97B20Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.Emma Ward just graduated from high school. She has worked hard all her life, trying to please a mother who is rarely satisfied. Now, she's at a crossroads and feels the need to take time off to decide on what she would like to study in college--or even figure if she wants to attend.An only child, with no friends, and a father still deep under his wife's spell, the loneliness begins to have her realize how much she has missed doing the usual every day stuff that kids do when they grow up. Even the year off she takes to do menial jobs to save money to go to college, does not fulfill her. She decides to go spend the summer with her aunt, Daisy, the much younger sister her mother has never liked. Too many years difference between them, and complete opposites character wise.Emma hopes to discover who she really is and what she wants out of life, somewhere, three hours North of Toronto.Marie Landry has a good eye for details and renders this story in the perfect tradition of a YA genre, with lots of candid introspection from our heroine, and many rewarding episodes that literally transform Emma before our eyes. Landry's portrayal of Emma's naiveté, blossoming into a wonderful young woman, leaves us in turn smiling with hope, biting our fingernails with worry, and rooting for her newfound love to be the real deal.This wonderful character every young woman is dying to meet is called, Nicholas Shaw. And the story portrays him as a hero from the beginning, leaving us to question his motives, his loyalty, and whether or not his devotion to Emma will endure.The normalcy of everyday conflicts, lined with some extraordinary events roots us there, tied to day-to-day living among Emma's friends, in a small village called Riverview--when it becomes more and more difficult to put the book down.This is Marie Landry's first novel, something she says she had put away many years ago, and then decided to finish; and I'm so glad she did. She has been a freelance writer since 2009 and to find out more about her, you can visit her website: [...]  and see what else she has cooking.