In the alluring YA novel Sunrise Nights, co-authors Jeff Zentner (Goodbye Days) and Brittany Cavallaro (Hello Girls) illustrate the makings of a rocky and unconventional relationship between two teenagers who meet on the last night of an arts camp.
Harbor Arts Camp is a sleepaway art camp, and on the final night of every session, students participate in the closing tradition, Sunrise Night: from dusk to dawn, students are allowed to leave the campgrounds and wander its small, neighboring Michigan town. This is how Jude and Florence meet. Florence is a dancer who is working through her insecurities surrounding her nystagmus, a degenerative eye disease that affects her balance and causes her eyes to "shake uncontrollably." Not too long from now, the nystagmus will force her to end her dance career. Jude, a photography student, is dealing with anxiety and the divorce of his parents. Although the pair become increasingly drawn to each other as the night progresses, they decide to avoid all communication after this night and go "total silence for a year." That is, until they meet again the following summer.
Sunrise Nights is an outstanding, emotional novel that tells the story of two teenagers' uncommon route to summer love. Zentner and Cavallaro use alternating points of view, both switching between verse and short chapters of prose, to recount Florence and Jude's slow-burn romance--a romance that takes place on Sunrise Nights over the course of three successive years. Readers of Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle or camp stories of any shape will likely relish Sunrise Nights. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer