Summer Reading: One of Us is Lying, Alex Approximately, and Alex and Eliza: a love story

Frequently, writers find inspiration from other artistic representations of a story that they are in essence retelling.  A chapter in my book, "Classic Connections," is devoted to books inspired by classic literature.  The novels I am recommending this month are inspired by dramatic performances.  Alex Approximately by Jenn Bennett (The Anatomical Shape of the Heart) gives a nod to the film You've Got Mail. In the book a New Jersey teen has an online relationship with a California boy based on their shared love of classic film.  When she moves to the West Coast for the summer, she struggles with the decision to meet him in person. One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus was inspired by John Hughes' film The Breakfast Club. In this re-imagining five students from differing social strata show up for detention and one of them ends up dead. Melissa de la Cruz (Something in Between) was motivated to write Alex and Eliza: a love story, when she went to see the musical Hamilton on Broadway. This imagined courtship between Alexander Hamilton and his wife Eliza Schuyler weaves together fact and fiction for an enchanting read. 

In Alex Approximately, classic movie buff Bailey "Mink" Rydell is heading from the East Coast to California to live with her dad. Throughout her junior year Mink has been involved  in an online relationship with a film geek named Alex, who happens to live in the same surfing town as her dad.  She decides to surreptitiously discover his identity before she reveals herself to him.  Meanwhile she is working at the oddball Cavern Palace Museum, where she is tormented daily by a security guard named Porter Roth.  When they get locked in the museum together one night, Mink begins to look at Porter in a different light and wonders if she should give up her search for Alex and focus on Porter.  What she doesn't know is Porter is actually Alex, approximately. This book is great fun and all the references to classic film are a bonus for movie buffs.

One of Us is Lying turns The Breakfast Club into a murder mystery.  Five students end up in detention, only four survive. Simon, who authors a brutal gossip app containing dirt on kids at his high school, drinks a glass of water laced with peanut oil and dies of anaphylactic shock.  He has damning information about all four remaining detainees: Bronwyn, the brainy good girl; Cooper, the baseball hero; Addy, the girl in her boyfriend's shadow, and Nate, the drug dealer. Now murder suspects, the four team up to find the real killer, upending their lives and finding romance along the way. This fast paced thriller will keep readers guessing, as the pressures of high school and the dangers of social media are explored in alternating chapters from all four suspects' perspectives.

Alex and Eliza, a fictionalized version of the romance between Alexander Hamilton, an aide for General Washington and America's first treasury secretary and Eliza Schuyler, a socially connected young woman, includes some historically accurate information and much imagined. Alex meets Eliza and incurs her wrath, when he delivers news to the family that her father is to be court martialed. He can't forget her fiery nature and two years later pursues her in Morristown, NJ, where she has come to inoculate soldiers against smallpox.  Although he comes from humble beginnings, he ultimately earns her love and rescues her from a disastrous engagement.  The story ends with the wedding of the two, who become a political power couple in the early days of a new nation.  Although many of the characters are real, much of the action, including Eliza's engagement to Henry Livingston and Hamilton uncovering Benedict Arnold's treason,  are fictional embellishments to add pizzazz to the story.  Told from Eliza's perspective, the story sheds some light on the civic minded woman who aided her husband with his political writings throughout his career.  This is an entertaining read for those who enjoy "history light."