"While Irish Eyes are Smiling" -Suzanne Supplee

Young Adult romances can be simpler love stories; this one fits the bill. It takes place in Ireland during a Study Abroad program.

Delk Sinclair decides to go to Ireland instead of hanging around Nashville, TN. She's running away from her debutante ball, step-mother, and memories of her mother's death from illness. While in Ireland, Delk makes friends, meets Pather, a boy who's also lost his mother, and confronts herself and her relationships at home, all while traveling among the beauty that is Ireland.

I was slightly impressed by this book. It's still a "cheap" paperback but Delk's character development was surprising. She is presented as shallow but not mean or dumb. Her growth is believeable, especially since the "terribleness" she attributes to her life is the normal exaggerations of a teenager. All in all, cute!

Read Also:

It turns out I don't read a lot of contemporary YA fiction but an oldie (and I mean the 80's) Tough-Luck Karen by Johanna Hurtwitz is about a girl who has a lot of things going wrong in her life. She'd go crazy if it weren't for her love of cooking.

Linda Crew's Children of the River is about a girl from Cambodia making her way in America.

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami.