Happy Books

I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer! Mine has been a lot more dramatic than I planned or wanted. My husband works next door in a machine shop. A few weeks ago he came into the back door yelling. His finger had been caught in on of the machines and was almost completely severed. I learned something very important in that moment. I do not do well at the sight of my husband's blood. The poor man had to calm me down. After that there were three surgeries to try to reattach the finger. In the end it turned out he lost the finger at the initial injury. I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time in the hospital (and I did) so I got some recommendations on some HAPPY books to read while I was there. Hospitals are usually enough of a soul suck I didn't need anything sad to read. My friends didn't let me down. The books they suggested were perfect. I even read some out loud to my husband and they had him smiling until it was time for the next pain pill.  Here are a few that made me smile. The covers and description are from Goodreads. I hope they make you smile too.

The Avery Shaw Experiment
by Kelly Oram

When Avery Shaw’s heart is shattered by her life-long best friend, she chooses to deal with it the only way she knows how—scientifically. 

The state science fair is coming up and Avery decides to use her broken heart as the topic of her experiment. She’s going to find the cure. By forcing herself to experience the seven stages of grief through a series of social tests, she believes she will be able to get over Aiden Kennedy and make herself ready to love again. But she can’t do this experiment alone, and her partner (ex partner!) is the one who broke her heart.

Avery finds the solution to her troubles in the form of Aiden’s older brother Grayson. The gorgeous womanizer is about to be kicked off the school basketball team for failing physics. He’s in need of a good tutor and some serious extra credit. But when Avery recruits the lovable Grayson to be her “objective outside observer,” she gets a whole lot more than she bargained for, because Grayson has a theory of his own: Avery doesn’t need to grieve. She needs to live. And if there’s one thing Grayson Kennedy is good at, it’s living life to the fullest.

That's The Spirit (The Pom Pom Periodicals B0ok 1)
by Dawn Leigh

When Chelsea gets nervous, embarrassed, or upset, she usually laughs it off, literally. But it’s not a happy sound. No, it’s an insane cackle, like the evil villain in a B movie horror flick, and she can’t control it.
So when she drops Alicia, her archenemy who just stole her boyfriend, during their cheer routine at a school assembly, it’s bad. But laughing like a maniac while Alicia writhes in pain from the leg she just broke, that’s a disaster. Chelsea doesn’t think it’s funny, but her annoying coping mechanism pops up and the whole school thinks she dropped Alicia on purpose.
Chelsea is kicked off the cheer team for her unsportsmanlike conduct and shunned by her classmates. With a cheer scholarship off the table, her only chance to afford her dream college is through academics. She’s getting good grades, so that would be fine, except she’s been paired with Cody, Alicia’s twin brother, to work together on the most important project of her senior year.
Cody isn’t happy to be forced to interact with Chelsea either. He has hated her since elementary school, for Chelsea’s treatment of Alicia. He plans to use the time with Chelsea to give her a little of the payback she deserves. The insults, pranks and sparks fly as the two find a way to get a passing grade without kissing . . . um, killing each other first!


Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe
by Shelley Coriell

Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe until her best friend shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, and so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her former BFs and struggling with her beloved Grams’s mental deterioration, lonely Chloe ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. Readers will fall in love with Chloe as she falls in love with the radio station and the misfits who call it home.





Also Know As
by Robin Benway

Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations.

Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover.