Past Perfect

Leila Sales

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Tentative Publish Date: 04 October 2011

Version: galley grab e-book

Series: none

Chelsea Glaser has worked at Colonial Essex Village since she was a child as this is where both of her parents work.  She now is a reenactor who works in the burying ground under the name of Elizabeth Connelly.  When her best friend, Fiona Warren, and she want to find work together for the summer, the last place she imagined she would be working at is at Essex.   Fiona is a drama kid, and being a reenactor sounds like perfect work to her.  Chelsea finally agrees to work at Essex, the place where she has been every summer for the past ten years.  At Summer Staff Orientation, Chelsea realizes that her ex-boyfriend, Ezra Gorman, is going to be working at Essex this summer as well.  Chelsea still hasn’t gotten over their breakup, which happened in April, and seeing him is going to make this summer more difficult.

Part of being summer staff at Colonial Essex Village is the “war” that is going on between them and Reenactmentland, which is just across the street.  In Essex, Tawny Nelson is the general and Chelsea is voted in at the Lieutenant.  Throughout the book, you read of the tricks that both parties play on each other to “win the war” for that year.  Dan Malkin and his family work at Reenactmentland. He meets Chelsea through one of the pranks that they play on Colonial Essex Village.  This is the story of a forbidden relationship.

 

 

All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.

Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….

▪Dan.  He is described as being attentive, smart, funny, caring, ambitious, really cute…those are only the words that I picked up on throughout the book.  From his actions, I would also add loyal and responsible.

▪The war that is going on between the two establishments.  This is another one of the love/hate relationships.  The part that I like about the war is that they take being reenactors seriously.

▪The history lessons.  It is hard to write about working in two places that do historical reenactments without having some basic knowledge of history.

▪How fickle the characters are.  When reading a story, you sometimes lose perspective of what age group you are reading about, especially when they are portraying reenactments from a different century.  When you remember that you are dealing with high-school students, it makes more sense.

▪Ezra Gorman.  Again – high school student.

▪Chelsea’s dad.  He has all these explanations for things and I can rarely follow them.  He likes to be the one talking.  There is a moment where he says some profound things, but mostly, he is saying stuff to either hear himself talk or to make himself look smarter.