The Juliet Club

The Juliet Club \ Chapter One\ Act I\ Scene I\ That afternoon, Kate went home from school and found her parents sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. Her father was drinking a cup of strong black coffee and rapidly tapping his foot, a sign of either great excitement, too much caffeine, or (probably) both. Her mother was sipping the herbal tea that she claimed kept her mind sharp and her outlook serene. Despite the tea, she was looking at Kate's father over the rim of her mug with a familiar expression of barely repressed irritation.\ Kate stopped in the doorway and looked from one parent to the other with grave suspicion. Although her father only lived ten miles away, her parents had made avoiding each other into an art form.\ "What's going on?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"\ "Wrong? No! Quite the contrary!" her father cried. "In fact, I have some wonderful news! Fantastic news! Amazing, stupendous, fabulous news!"\ Her mother started to roll her eyes, caught herself, and took a calming sip of tea instead. "I never should have encouraged you to get involved in that community theater," she murmured. "Just tell her, Tim."\ "All right, all right." Kate's father was so happy that he didn't even stop to give his usual lecture about Why Enthusiasm Is the Most Underrated Virtue in Our Modern Age of Cynicism. "You remember the writing contest I suggested you enter last fall?"\ "Which one?" she asked. Her father was constantly handing her entry forms that required that she write an essay, a poem, a short story, or, if all else failed, an advertising slogan. "There was that haikucontest. And I remember writing a ten-minute play over winter break—"\ "No, no, no, the contest sponsored by the University of Verona!" he cried. "Surely you remember? The university that's holding a series of seminars on Romeo and Juliet? One of which I was asked to teach? Because I'm considered one of the world's foremost experts on Shakespeare?"\ He looked questioningly at his daughter and ex-wife. They looked blankly back.\ "I don't know why I bother to tell anyone about my life, I really don't," he said, rather sulkily. "It's quite clear that no one listens to a word I say."\ Her mother pursed her lips. "Well, you do say so many words, Tim. It's hard to keep up."\ He opened his mouth to respond, but—just in time—Kate remembered dashing off ten pages on nature imagery in A Midsummer Night's Dream, right before the deadline. "Oh, wait. Got it. I stayed up until three a.m. to finish the essay. I fell asleep the next day in history." She frowned. "And I failed a pop quiz in chemistry."\ "Petty concerns that will soon recede into the mists of time!" he said, waving a hand dismissively. "Minor problems that will soon be forgotten! Sacrifices that you will soon see were well worth making! And why is that, you ask?"\ He waited. Kate obediently gave him his cue. "I don't know, Dad. Why?"\ "Because you won!"\ "Really? That's great." Kate opened the refrigerator to get a soda. Considering the number of competitions her parents and teachers urged her to enter, it would be strange if she didn't win a few here and there.\ "Congratulations, honey." Her mother refilled her cup. "A humanities prize will make your college applications a little more well-rounded."\ "Zounds, Emily, is that all you can think about?" Her father began pacing around the kitchen. "Her college applications? How prosaic! How pedestrian! How—"\ "Practical," her mother pointed out austerely.\ "But surely the more important point is that Kate gets to go to Italy!" He stopped in mid-pace to add, rather anticlimatically, "I told you it wasn't a waste of time to start reading the sonnets to her when she was eighteen months old!"\ "I never said it was a waste of time," her mother said crossly. "I just thought picture books were more age appropriate—"\ "Wait, wait, wait . . . I get to go to Italy?" Kate had only left Kansas three times in her life: to visit her grandmother in Chicago, to go to summer camp in Missouri, and to accompany her mother to a constitutional law conference in New Jersey that was, unbelievably, even more boring than it sounded. "Italy. As in Europe."\ "Yes!" Her father bounced a couple of times, beaming at her. "Congraulazioni! We'll leave the day after school ends! We'll stay in an actual villa! And for four glorious weeks, we will experience the genius of Shakespeare and the splendors of la bella Italia!"\ "You'll be there for a whole month?" Her mother's cup clattered into its saucer. "But what about thatclass in advanced rhetoric at the University of Kansas this summer? Remember, Kate? We signed you up ages ago—"\ "Emily." Her father stopped bouncing, lowered his head, and frowned ferociously, a theatrical expression that Kate privately called his King Lear look. "This Is a Once In a Lifetime Opportunity." He thundered out the words, dramatically pausing between each one to make sure they heard the capital letters. This technique was invariably effective with his students (especially the freshmen), but Kate and her mother were far too used to it to be cowed.\ "But she'll get college credit for the rhetoric class," her mother said.\ "Which she will also earn for studying in the Shakespeare seminar," he countered triumphantly.\ "Seminar?" Kate had a sinking feeling that she wasn't remembering the details of this contest with perfect clarity. "What seminar?"\ "That's the prize: as one of the Shakespeare Scholars, you will have the distinction, the honor, the privilege of studying Romeo and Juliet in the heart of Verona, where the play is set!" Her father's eyes were shining as if he had just caught sight of Shakespeare himself. "You're going to learn so much, even though your class is going to be taught by"—his face darkened—"Francesca Marchese."\ There was a brief, fraught silence.\ The Juliet Club. Copyright © by Suzanne Harper. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

\ Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)“[A] delightful, light, and romantic read.”\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyAfter winning a Shakespeare essay contest, practical Kate is off to Verona, Italy, to attend a summer seminar about Romeo and Juliet.There, at a romantic villa, she and her classmates act out scenes from the play, learn Elizabethan dances and answer letters written to Juliet from teenagers who are, as her dramatic professor puts it, "lost, wandering, desperate for advice about love." (A real-life club in Verona answers thousands of such letters each year.) Of course, in the true spirit of the Bard, they also experience romantic complications: Kate and flirty Giacomo discover the other students plotting to "pull a Beatrice and Benedick" (from Much Ado About Nothing) and make them fall in love with each other. Although Harper's wit is less acute than in her debut, The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney, her sense of humor and flair for playful dialogue remain strong enough to overcome the predictable narrative arc. Plenty of drama-on- and offstage-will keep readers in their seats. Ages 12-up. (June)\ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \ \ Children's Literature\ - Danielle Williams\ When Kate gets her heart broken she vows never to fall in love again. But when she wins a trip to Verona, Italy, to study Shakespeare, her friends plant other ideas in her head. Kate is determined that the trip to Italy is going to be a purely scholarly trip and, though Kate is determined not to fall in love, the new friends she makes in Verona have other plans. When Kate overhears their plans to trick Kate and Giacomo into falling in love, Kate agrees to work with Giacomo to make them believe they are falling for each other, only to announce at the end of the seminar that they were simply fooling their friends. But as Kate and Giacomo spend more and more time together, they begin to develop real feelings for one another. Written to mimic a Shakespearean play, the story is sweet and captivating and filled with quotes and historical tidbits from Shakespeare's works and time. Reviewer: Danielle Williams\ \ \ \ \ KLIATT\ - Janis Flint-Ferguson\ Kate and her father, Dr. Sanderson, are on their way to Verona, Italy for the summer Shakespeare Seminar. While he is teaching a class at the first annual seminar with famous author Professoressa Marchese, Kate finds herself in a classroom with Dr. Marchese's son Giacomo, local Italian teens Sylvia and Benno, American athlete Tom Boone, and Southern belle Lucy Atwell. The teens are involved in a study of Romeo and Juliet while the twists and turns of Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing pepper the plot line. Kate's friends back home have wagered favorite accessories that Kate will find love in Italy after her boyfriend has broken her heart. Sylvia and Giacomo wager that Giacomo can get the American girl to fall in love with him, while Kate and Giacomo plot to make sure that Sylvia and the others think that they have fallen in love. Complicating the plots are the personalities of the teens themselves. From the charmer Giacomo to brilliant, suspicious Kate, each character has a different reason for doubting the power of love. Part of the teens' study involves answering letters about love relationships that are submitted to Juliet at the villa that tradition says was the home of the Capulets in Verona. So while flirting and pretense take place among the six, they are also fielding questions submitted by other love-struck teens and looking critically at the relationship between Juliet and Romeo in the play. Readers will be treated to a full helping of Shakespearean quotes and plot devices as the romantic antics take place against the backdrop of modern Italy. Reviewer: Janis Flint-Ferguson\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 7 Up- High school junior Kate is practical and unromantic and, after a relationship gone wrong, has sworn off love. When she wins a writing contest sponsored by the University of Verona, she spends four weeks in Italy studying Romeo and Juliet . The seminar is taught by Francesca Marchese, the academic archrival of Kate's father, a well-known Shakespeare professor. Kate arrives to find that she and the other participants are required to volunteer with the Juliet Club (an actual organization); they will answer letters sent to Juliet by those seeking advice on matters of the heart. But Kate; fellow Americans Lucy and Tom; and Italians Giacomo Marchese, Benno, and Silvia rapidly become involved in romantic entanglements of their own in a plot that combines elements not only of Romeo and Juliet , but of Much Ado about Nothing and Henry V as well. This Shakespearean update is an absolutely delightful read. The characters are believable and appealing, and the complicated romantic plotting never bogs down. Harper's descriptions of Verona and Italian life are wonderfully detailed and evocative.-Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ\ \ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsKate Sanderson isn't exactly thrilled by the concept of "true love," having been sadly disappointed by the one-and-only boyfriend of her 16-year life. But when she wins a writing contest to attend a Shakespeare seminar in Verona, Italy, romance seems to be around every twist and turn of its antique streets. Six high-school students-three American and three Italian-take part in the seminar. One daily task is to answer letters from the lovelorn that are sent to the tragic heroine Juliet from all over the world. As they respond to these letters and as they practice their roles for an end-of-summer performance of Romeo and Juliet, relationships form and change. Each character grows in new directions, challenging their preconceived notions of who they are, to whom they are attracted and what "true" love is really all about. As frothy as the foam on a cup of cappuccino, this is a perfect summer read for girls with a touch of romance in their hearts. (Fiction. 12 & up)\ \