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In My Mailbox was created by Kristi from The Story Siren. Here's what I found in my mailbox, at the bookstore, and at the library this week. Summaries are taken from Amazon, B&N, and GoodReads.

Sea Change by Aimee Freidman - 16-year-old Miranda Merchant is great at science...and not so great with boys. After major drama with her boyfriend and (now ex) best friend, she's happy to spend the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island, helping her mother sort out her late grandmother's estate. There, Miranda finds new friends and an island with a mysterious, mystical history, presenting her with facts her logical, scientific mind can't make sense of. She also meets Leo, who challenges everything she thought she knew about boys, friendship...and reality. Is Leo hiding something? Or is he something that she never could have imagined?

The Wedding Girl by Madeleine Wickham - At the age of eighteen, in that first golden Oxford summer, Milly was up for anything. Rupert and his American lover, Allan, were an important part of her new, exciting life, so when Rupert suggested to her that she and Allan should get married to keep Allan in the country, Milly didn’t hesitate. Ten years later, Milly is a very different person and engaged to Simon—who is wealthy, serious, and believes her to be perfect. Milly’s secret history is locked away so securely she has almost persuaded herself that it doesn’t exist—until, only four days before her elaborate wedding. To have and to hold takes on a whole new meaning when one bride’s past catches up with her and bring the present crashing down.

Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan (ARC) - Fifteen-year-old Blake has a girlfriend and a friend who’s a girl. One of them loves him; the other one needs him. When he snapped a picture of a street person for his photography homework, Blake never dreamed that the woman in the photo was his friend Marissa’s long-lost meth addicted mom. Blake’s participation in the ensuing drama opens up a world of trouble, both for him and for Marissa. He spends the next few months trying to reconcile the conflicting roles of Boyfriend and Friend. His experiences range from the comic (surviving his dad’s birth control talk) to the tragic (a harrowing after-hours visit to the morgue). In a tangle of life and death, love and loyalty, Blake will emerge with a more sharply defined snapshot of himself.

That's my collection for the week. What books did pick up?

The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham

The Gatecrasher has been on my “to be read” list for so long that I had almost given up on it completely. I’m so glad that I didn’t! The moment I started reading Madeleine Wickham’s modern day novel of manners, I was hooked! The story has humor, suspense and questions morality that kept me flipping pages at a non-stop pace.

I loved the breezy, upbeat manner in which Ms. Wickham chose to tell the story. It was so fluid that it almost played out like a movie. Wickham, who also writes under the enormously popular pseudonym Sophie Kinsella (of Shopaholic fame) wrote The Gatecrasher in third person as opposed to the Shopaholic’s intimate first. This distance allowed me to understand each characters’ personal obstacles in relation to to each other with equal sympathy. Even Fleur Daxeny, the central character of the novel who makes her living swindling wealthy widowers, becomes sympathetic and a character I really enjoyed reading about.

Wickham did a wonderful job developing her characters while keeping the plot moving forward. The Gatecrasher is a marvelous book for a rainy day or a trip to the sunny beach!

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