The Sister Split - Softcover

Desombre, Auriane

 
9780593568712: The Sister Split
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593568710 ISBN 13: 9780593568712
Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A pair of soon-to-be stepsisters creates a plan that will stop their parents from getting married—but they soon learn that matters of the heart can surprise you! This is a fresh sister story evocative of The Parent Trap with LGBTQ themes for the modern reader.


Autumn is looking forward to summer vacation. She and her best friend plan on going to all the best ice cream places their stomachs can handle—and in NYC, the possibilities can’t get any sweeter. 
 
Linnea is still not over the fact that her dad has found love after her parents' divorce. Luckily, she can take out all her feelings on the tennis courts for a winning summer.

But then Autumn and Linnea discover the news: their parents are getting married. Autumn will be moving to the suburbs to live with her soon-to-be stepdad and stepsister, which means kissing the fun summer with her best friend goodbye. For Linnea, she knows her dream of getting her parents back together is officially over. 
 
Devastated, the two of them come up with an idea: if they can split up their parents, their lives can go back to normal. As Autumn and Linnea secretly try to sabotage everything from date nights to wedding planning, the two of them discover that having a sister is not the worst thing after all . . . but will they learn about love in a whole new way?


"A sweet and compelling story on the many unexpected and wonderful shapes love and family can take.”—Rachel Lippincott, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Five Feet Apart

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Auriane Desombre is a middle-school teacher and freelance editor. She holds an MA in English Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing for Children & Young Adults. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Sammy, who is a certified bad boy. She is the author of I Think I Love You, and The Sister Split is her middle-grade debut.

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CHAPTER ONE


Ice cream always tastes better when it’s banned. Well, not banned, exactly, but Mom specifically told me to come straight home after school today because she has some kind of special announcement. Friday is mint chocolate chip day, though. It says so in curly green ink at the top of Saskia’s planner, in the space where she’s supposed to write her homework for language arts. We’ve been using it to plan our hunt for the best ice cream shop in the neighborhood instead. And I’m not about to skip mint chocolate chip day.

No matter how curious I am about Mom’s announcement.

“Okay, let’s get down to business,” Saskia says, clicking her pen.

I nod through bites of ice cream, pulling my map out of my backpack and laying it carefully on the table between us. I spent all of math class drawing it. Mom’s worried about my math grade, but perfecting my map-making abilities is way more fun than probability. No matter how important Ms. Albright insists percentages and negative numbers are, I already know that the probability of using them in real life is less than zero. Maps, though, I need in real life all the time. Right now, for example, a map is all I need for us to get the perfect summer plan down.

Saskia leans over, holding her melty ice cream off to the side so it doesn’t dribble onto my outline of downtown Manhattan. I only drew the parts of the city where we’re allowed to go on our own. Our moms agreed that we’re both allowed to travel within a fifteen-block radius of our apartments.

Popping the crunchy tip of the cone into my mouth, I dig through my backpack for the stickers I picked out from a stationery store last month. They cost more than the ones I found at Duane Reade, but they include a bunch of pizza slices with googly eyes, and that was worth the extra $1.25. I peel one off and stick it over Carmine Street on the map.

“We have to start with Joe’s Pizza, obviously.”

The end of sixth grade is in just one week, which means we have a week to plan a whole summer’s worth of outings. There are endless summer days to fill, just the two of us.

First up: a pizza tour.

I dot my map with pizza stickers while Saskia draws ice cream cones over our favorite shops. She gets the curl of the scoop right every time.

“Okay, what’s next?” she asks. “Cupcake wars challenge? Museum art reenactment? Fancy tea shop party? Beach day?”

“Beach day,” I say with a wistful sigh. Getting caught in ocean waves is the best kind of fun. The beach kind of sucks in the city, though. Coney Island is great and all, but it’s always packed with people, and Mom has to assign family swimming shifts so that there’s someone to sit on the towel and watch our stuff.

Instead, I type tea places into the maps app on the cell phone Mom finally let me get a few months ago. I’m just about to copy the first place I find onto our map when the phone rings.

“Autumn?” Mom says as soon as I pick up.

“We’re on our way home,” I say quickly.

Mom laughs. “I know you stopped for ice cream.”

I groan. The only downside of having a phone is the Find My app, which Mom insists on using to make sure I don’t get kidnapped. Or stop for ice cream.

“It’s mint chip day,” I say.

“As much as I hate to interrupt mint chip day,” Mom says, and I can hear the smile in her voice, “it’s family game night. I need you home, okay?”

I guess that’s one other downside to finally having a phone: Mom can always call to force me to leave Saskia and go hang out with Harrison, aka Harristinks.

Every Friday used to be family game night. We’d order pizza and play Monopoly. My big brother, George, would always let me have the lucky race car but be a real sore loser about it when I bought his favorite hotels. Mom would then sneak up for the win as we argued. The winner--always, always Mom--would get to pick our movie for the night, and she’d make us watch something that sounded super dumb but would turn out to be great.

But two years ago Mom started dating Harrison, and I got to kiss family game night goodbye. It became family game night plus Harrison and his boring daughter, Linnea, who always ends up ruining it. Harristinks is a science teacher, and having him over for game night feels exactly like inviting Ms. Albright to my living room to teach me more about negative numbers. Last time, he spent the whole night telling us about some lesson he was planning to teach on the phases of the moon and the shifting constellations, which made even Monopoly boring. On the rare occasions he’s not talking about space--and seriously, they’re rare--he’s joining forces with Mom to try and make me bond with Linnea.

Harrison doesn’t even live in New York; he lives in some random town in Connecticut, which means they have to take a long train ride to come ruin our Friday tradition. That’s how determined he is. I don’t get why Mom invites him. Soggy cardboard is funnier than his jokes.

Ever since he started coming around, I’ve done my best to skip family game night, but Mom always sees right through my attempts.

“But, Mom--”

“Start heading home right now, Autumn,” she says sternly. “I have a special announcement today, and I don’t want you to be late.”

I sit up straighter, curiosity spiking through me again. “What is it?”

Maybe she broke up with Harristinks. She could do so much better than a boyfriend so boring he needed to go all the way to space to try and find a personality.

“I’ll tell you when you get here,” Mom says. “Hurry.”

She says goodbye and hangs up.

“I have to head home,” I say as I carefully fold the map, and Saskia’s shoulders slump. “Mom says she has a special announcement.”

Saskia and I leave the ice cream store and cross the street to the subway entrance. Outside, it smells like city summer: hot garbage and chocolate ice cream. The air gets hotter and stuffier as we go down the stairs to the subway platform.

Saskia crosses her fingers at me. “Maybe the announcement is that your mom broke up with Harristinks.”

I laugh. Saskia and I are always on the same wavelength, like our thoughts are written in our eyes in a language only the two of us can read. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

I hate Harrison, and not just because he’s the most boring person I’ve ever met in my entire life. Boyfriends aren’t supposed to be a thing for moms. Before Harrison came along, Mom spent all her free time with George and me. Family game night was just the three of us, making the rules exactly the way we like them to be. Saturdays were for cool art projects and exploring our neighborhood. And every evening after school, we’d have dinner as a family, and George would teach me and Mom new recipes he found after scouring his collection of cookbooks. Now most of the weekend is Mom posting the emergency phone numbers on the fridge before she waltzes out the door to go on a date, leaving George to watch me.

Boyfriends are supposed to be for my friends, who keep asking each other who do you like? during Truth or Dare at sleepovers and carefully track who’s asking out who. I always pretend to have a crush on Tim Walton even though I don’t really care about him that much. It just feels easier to pretend I like a boy than try to explain why I still haven’t had a crush on...

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Verlag
Random House Children's Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593568710
ISBN 13 
9780593568712
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
Niedersachsen
49078
Deutschland

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