The sun is sweltering. Sweat drips from your every pore and your muscles ache from heat exhaustion. Nothing sounds more refreshing than a cool glass of ice water.
Similarly, the school year drags on. It is past the middle of the last quarter of the year, and exams and papers have piled up. And right now, nothing could be more enjoyable and refreshing than reading Galaxy Craze's By the Shore.

What makes By the Shore so enjoyable is not the writing, although it is good, and not the humor, although it is funny, but the story line, which is a dead-on portrayal of the life of a 12-year-old girl.

May lives with her mother, Lucy, and her younger brother, Eden, in a boarding school-turned-bed and breakfast in rural England. Lucy is distracted from motherhood by the men and friends in her life. Eden is too busy to notice because he lives in a make-believe world of fairies and elves. But May wants some attention from her mom.

May tells one friend that her parents are still married, but that her father lives in the city. She tries to be popular by buying new clothes and hair barrettes with furry fishes on them.

When an eligible bachelor author comes to stay in the bed and breakfast, lives are turned upside-down in a romance too sweet to be seen through any but the eyes of a child.

Rufus comes to Lucy's bed and breakfast to work on the book he is translating. His on-again, off-again girlfriend, Patricia, makes many visits because she is jealous that Lucy is seducing Rufus. Patricia is right to be worried, as she is soon out of the picture. May's father enters the scene and May watches as her parents quickly rekindle, then extinguish any romance that might have been left between them.

Fortunately, Rufus remains.

Amidst all the turmoil of her mother's love life, May tries to find her place at school and in her family. Patricia lies to the popular girls at May's school and says May knows the famous musician Jet Jones, and that he has even kissed her. Suddenly May finds herself invited to the most exclusive birthday party of year, but leaves her best friends behind in the process.

Not surprisingly, May discovers that popular girls are not all they seem, childhood fantasies about parents should remain fantasies and, most importantly, her father is a jerk.

As By the Shore unravels, what's left is two people in love, a family full of surprises and two friends who love each other enough to remain friends.

Aside from a glass of ice water, what could be more refreshing than that?