Their fathers are semi-secretly, bi-coastally dating, and they wanttheir daughters to get to know each other while they themselves are vacationing inChina. This is another book for keeps, a beautiful, beautiful read.At the start of this epistolary (via email) novel, twelve-year-olds Bett Devlin,an adventure-loving California girl of African American and Brazilian descent,and Avery Bloom, a tightly wound New Yorker whose single father is UkrainianJewish, are strangers (and adversaries) about to be thrown together at sleep-awaysummer camp. A letter from Marlow Devlin to Bett, To Night Owl from Dogfish You don’t have to fight all your own battles. I will contact the camp if you want me to do that. Bett, never one to let things lie, storms out and confronts them, and then writes to her father about the episode. A letter from Bett to Avery, To Night Owl from DogfishĪnother favourite passage comes at a point when Bett overhears two girls talking about how having a gay dad probably damaged the girl. Both of them have to care about living things in order to be any good at their job. When you think about it doctors + writers aren’t that different.

They made me stop and just take a moment to think about them. Just like in any truly lovely book, there were lines that stood out to me. Letter after letter is exchanged (without seeming at all contrived) through the course of the book and I chuckled, gasped and cried.

You may think you can imagine where things go from there, but there’s no way you can predict everything that happens in this book peopled with all kinds of characters from Bett’s grandmother Gaga to Avery’s biological mother Kristina. And then, how can they not share information about their dads? Slowly, they tell each other all about themselves, their families, their dreams … An email once in a while can’t hurt, though. Bett and Avery are sent away for a camp so that they can bond with each other and become sisters, but they decide not to talk to each other at all because they refuse to become friends, let alone sisters. In the way of stories – and real life – nothing goes according to plan.

They don’t want two families to become one! They’re happy by themselves and determined to cast a spoke in their fathers’ wheels. In fact, the relationship is so serious that they want their daughters to get to know each other.īett writes to Night Owl, aka Avery. She checks his email and discovers that he is in a relationship with Avery’s father, Sam Bloom. Dogfish, aka Bett, loves snooping on her father. It’s crazy, full of laugh-out-loud humour, and poignant (yes, I did cry over it).

To Night Owl from Dogfish is right up there with the best of them.

To dogfish from night owl