Seventeen-year-old Alexandra spends so much time helping others realize their dreams that she never has time for her own. An expert ocean diver and reluctant maker of wedding cakes, she longs to leave roses and frosting behind to study oceanography. Alex’s mother won’t have it—needy and dependent, Mom can’t run the family wedding cake business on her own.
No matter what Alex does, things only get worse for her. When she saves a man’s life while scuba diving and becomes the local hero, Mom’s angry with Alex for going diving at all. Mom discourages Alex’s new friendship with Jeremy, a fun and insanely wealthy boy who happens to have a secret. Then, Alex’s best friend, Zack, a hunky island guy, starts to take an interest in her as well. The problem is, he’s dating another girl.
If she doesn’t do something fast, Alex will spend her life making wedding cakes and be buried in her “Sue’s Wedding Cakery” apron with a spatula in her hand.
The Wedding Cake Girl features a colorful island setting, dangerous underwater diving adventures, a family of billionaires, and lots and lots of buttercream. The book is Alex’s journey toward not only finding love, but learning how to step forward and take control of her own life, a rite of passage that faces all young readers.
“I loved this tender, sweet and emotionally charged story that kept me reading half the night!” (Read review)
“The Wedding Cake Girl was cute, funny, down-to-Earth and surprised me a few times along the way.” (Read review)
“A well-written emotional plot with a lot of twists and turns that will keep you hooked from the beginning. Highly recommended for all YA genre fans.” (Read review)
Excerpt from The Wedding Cake Girl
Chapter 1
Mom stands at the kitchen counter in her pink apron that says “Sue’s Wedding Cakery, Santa Margarita Island.” She’s experimenting with a new frosting. The kitchen smells like a bank of fresh wild mint growing along a stream.
On my good days, I think of Mom as “The Caked Crusader,” whose mission in life is to fill the world with perfect wedding cakes. On my bad days, I think more like my friend Zack who, after we saw the film Titanic, began calling Mom “The Iceberg.”
“Why?” I had asked him.
“Because she’s in your way.”
He didn’t have to remind me what happened to the Titanic.
I have to talk to her now. I’ve gotten special permission to attend an advanced oceanography class this summer at Beach City College, which is awesome, because I’m just a senior in high school. Or will be in September.
But the deadline to enroll is in three hours, at five o’clock. And Mom doesn’t know that. The $1700 tuition is due immediately upon acceptance, and she doesn’t know that either. In fact, Mom doesn’t even know this class exists. Every time I go to talk to her about it, I end up putting it off.
Like now.
I need to bring in the rest of the supplies, which I’ve just picked up at the freight barge. I run out to our van, parked in front of our house, and open the back. With its painted pink wedding cakes and its “Sue’s Wedding Cakery” lettering, no one’s ever going steal this vehicle. Even it weren’t almost fifteen years old.
Sweat trickling down my neck, I tie my long coppery hair up into a knot. I yank on the biggest box, filled with bags of flour, and get it up in the air, my knees almost buckling beneath me.
“I got it, Alex.”
It’s Zack. My diving partner and best friend since I was six. He lifts the box from my hands and jerks his head toward a smaller one. “Take that.”
I blink. Whatever happened to my old friend, the skinny kid with the stick legs and pencil arms? This new guy has sun-streaked hair, broad shoulders, and strong, muscled arms that make my heart swoon.
His Uncle Dizzy’s old pickup truck, which Zack borrows whenever he can, is parked at the curb. “I was driving by and saw you, so I stopped to help.”
I pull myself together. “Hey, I’m on top of this one!”
He grins down at me from his still surprising new height of six feet. “Yeah, yeah,” he teases me. “You’ve proved how strong you are. Now chill and take the other box.”
We dodge garbage cans as we walk down the path that runs along the side of my house to the back patio. Zack’s in front, which allows me to observe the excellent way his pants fit him. I sigh. Too bad he’s with Rosie now.