The Lake Effect

by Erin McCahan

Overview

A funny, bracing, poignant YA romance and coming-of-age for fans of Huntley Fitzpatrick, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and The Beginning of Everything

lake effect | n.
1. The effect of any lake, especially the Great Lakes, in modifying the weather in nearby areas
2. The effect of elderly ladies, mysterious girls, and countless funerals, in upending your life, one summer at the beach

It’s the summer after senior year, and Briggs Henry is out the door. He's leaving behind his ex-girlfriend and his parents’ money troubles for Lake Michigan and its miles of sandy beaches, working a summer job as a personal assistant, and living in a gorgeous Victorian on the shore. It's the kind of house Briggs plans to buy his parents one day when he’s a multi-millionaire. But then he gets there. And his eighty-four-year-old boss tells him to put on a suit for her funeral.

So begins a summer of social gaffes, stomach cramps, fraught beach volleyball games, moonlit epiphanies, and a drawer full of funeral programs. Add to this Abigail, the mystifying girl next door on whom Briggs's charms just won’t work, and “the lake effect” is taking on a whole new meaning.

Smart, funny, and honest, The Lake Effect is about realizing that playing along is playing it safe, and that you can only become who you truly are if you’re willing to take the risk.

"Vibrant and smart . . . Perfect to tote around on vacation." —Bustle 
“Every word glows with brilliance." —Francisco X. Stork, author of Marcelo in the Real World
"Dazzlingly hilarious . . . Erin McCahan is the reigning queen of summer YA reads." —PopSugar
“Observant, sarcastic, compelling, and very funny.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Summer romance at its best." —HelloGiggles
“The perfect smart, beachside read. . . . Unforgettable.” —Stephanie Elliot, author of Sad Perfect
"Elegant and touching." —Publishers Weekly
“Refreshingly honest and real. . . . An absolute must-read.” —Elise Allen, co-author of Elixir
“Funny and poignant." —PureWow
"Thought provoking—and at times hilarious . . . A great summer read." —SLJ

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101625989
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	07/11/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Erin McCahan is a native Michigander who grew up on the beaches of Grand Haven and Macatawa. Now a resident of landlocked New Albany, Ohio, she and her husband return every summer to North Beach in South Haven, on the shores of Lake Michigan. Look for them under the red and white striped umbrella.

Read an Excerpt

1

WANTED: Strong eighteen-year-old guy with reliable means of transportation and reasonable handyman skills to work for eighty-four-year-old widow in relatively good, if controversial, health at her house on Lake Michigan. Candidate must enjoy swimming, sunsets, beach volleyball, girls in cowboy hats, attending funerals, blue paint, things that jiggle, flamingoes, small dogs, new words, Episcopalians, noodle kugel, losing friends, losing family, and watching his life as he knows it pretty much come to an end. Knowledge of the intestinal tract, including the role of the ileum, helpful but not required. Smokers and tourists need not apply.

 

This wasn’t the ad for the job I took last summer.

But it should have been.

 

 

2

It was a couple weeks before graduation when I got the job working for Mrs. B. I’d been bussing tables, part-time, at Cascade Country Club for four years by then. I worked like a dog, but the money was good. Especially after big parties. I always went home with tips and phone numbers from women who wanted me to meet their daughters. I didn’t call them, because what was I going to do? Say, “Hi, I’m the guy who schlepped your mom’s dirty dishes all night. Want to go out sometime?” Plus I had a girlfriend—for a while—and, anyway, that’s not how I wanted to meet someone. Still, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a huge ego feed.

Moms loved me. Especially Taylor’s mom, who called me a catch, which really pissed off Taylor, which kind of amused me. “Does she think I would go out with someone who isn’t a catch?” she asked me one night back in April, ten days before we broke up.

But, yeah, moms loved me, including my own, I’m not embarrassed to say. She bragged I had a million-dollar smile. Dad called it a $5,600-smile, which is what they paid for my braces in eighth grade. $5,651 to be exact. Dad reminded me enough times and gave me all sorts of grief, a couple years later, for chewing gum, until I finally just quit. I mean, I get it. $5,651 is a ton of money. Especially for someone else’s teeth.

Grandma Ruth just said chewing gum in public was common. As if common was a dirty word.

My smile and Grandma Ruth got me the job with Mrs. B. There wasn’t an old lady in the world I couldn’t charm after handling Grandma Ruth all my life. I learned to fake this kind of carefree, easygoing, unbothered smile just for her. Fake it till you make it, my dad said, and he would know. I mean, carefree, easygoing, and unbothered were three things no one ever felt around the woman. More like tense, tired, and dyspeptic, which is a word I learned at the beach. Before I got the job with Mrs. B., I just said sick to my stomach.

My smile came from playing cards with my grandmother for hours on end, watching HGTV, and force-feeding myself jars of her homemade grape jelly, which I’m pretty sure she made with toadstools and piss.

She was my babysitter—her house, after school and every weekend—from the ages of nine to eleven when Mom and Dad were swamped by life. There was no saying no to Grandma Ruth. Not even no, thank you. She was kind of a fascist, and my parents were not part of the resistance movement. Too busy to take sides. So I learned to get along. With a smile. Like you do with dictators when you really just want to be left alone.

I honed it over the years—this smile—and developed others, especially when I went to work at a country club. I learned from going out with Taylor that every expression has meaning behind it. My Country Club Smile said, No matter how nasty, demanding, or bat-shit crazy you are, I can get along because I’m getting paid, and one of us is leaving soon, so [big smile] how may I help you?

One of the women at the club—Mrs. Conkright, overly tanned and dripping with gold—always told me after her two-martini lunches how much she liked my smile. “Oh, that smile, Briggs.  The hearts you’re going to break with that smile.” She’d press her hands flat against her chest—jewelry clinking—and add, “Mine is already one of them.” And she was, like, fifty, and married, so this was just the game, you know?

My dad always said that much of life was a game, so it was important to know the rules.

Mrs. Conkright owned an elder-care advocacy company and had recently been hired by Mrs. B. to find suitable live-in help for ten weeks over the summer. Mrs. B. owned a house on the beach in South Haven, here in Michigan, that needed some minor work. She didn’t drive but wasn’t ready for assisted living, and really only lived in the house from late spring through summer. She had a second place somewhere warm for the rest of the year.  When Mrs. Conkright learned I’d done my senior-year service project volunteering at Bluestone Court Assisted Living Center—and smiling till my face hurt—she hired me on the spot.

“Try not to break her heart,” she said to me, after telling me a little about Mrs. B., and I said, “She’ll probably end up breaking mine.”

Mrs. Conkright grinned at her lunch companions and said, “Ladies, what did I tell you?”

She gave me a ten-dollar tip, which I put in the tip pool. She also gave me her niece’s phone number, which I put in my pocket and only threw out after she left.

 

 

3

I mastered a bunch of different Old People Smiles at Bluestone Court, which my dad called Bluehair Court, like it was the punchline to the most hilarious joke he’d ever told. I had to be careful not to say it that way when I was there. His jokes had a way of sinking into my mind, whether I wanted them to or not.

There was my:

•         There’s My Girl Smile

•         Why, Yes, I’d Love Another Hug Smile

•         All Right, Law & Order’s On . . . Again! Smile

•         Your Granddaughters Are Beautiful Smile

•         Yeah, You Farted and We All Heard It Smile

•         No, Nixon Is Not the Current President Smile

•         Yes, I Would Love to Hear Again How You Met Your Husband Smile

•         Cards? I’ll Deal Smile

And the classic . . .

•         Yes, It Is a Good Day to Be Alive Smile.

At home, it was pretty much just my Yeah, Dad, You’re a Hoot Smile, 24/7.

 

 

4

I met Mrs. B. a week after graduation, which came and went much faster than I thought it would. Senior year was crazy busy, crazy stressful. Then suddenly it was over. It was graduation morning, and I didn’t have school, swimming, baseball, studying, volunteering, stressing, work. I had this whole day with nothing but the ceremony that evening, so I made coffee for my parents and then had coffee with my parents and kept thinking, Man, this feels weird. For the last two years, we all had mismatched schedules. First one up—that was me—made coffee. Last one to leave—that was Mom—washed the pot. We only drank coffee together on Christmas. On every other holiday or weekend, at least two of us were working. The other was sleeping in.

I was quiet until Dad said he wasn’t proud of me. As only my dad could. Mom and I smiled to let him know we found him funny.

Mom listed some of my highlights from the year:

•         class president

•         ranked ninth academically

•         captain of the baseball team

•         co-captain of the swimming team

•         double letter winner

•         Academic All-State baseball

•         Scholar Athlete of the Year

•         homecoming king

•         full academic scholarship to the University of Michigan

•         makes coffee every morning

“And he remembers to put the toilet seat down,” she said. “Our son’s quite a catch, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

Dad didn’t look up from the newspaper when he said, “Are we supposed to be proud?”

“You’ve got to admit it’s a good list,” I said to him.

“It’s not a bad list.”

“It’s a good list,” Mom said. And she would know. She lives by lists.

Dad put the paper down and dropped his hands on top of it. “It’s high school,” he said to Mom. “I have always expected our son to do well in high school and graduate, so, no, I am not proud of him for doing what was expected.” Then he reached out his long arms—​I inherited his build, his height, but Mom’s light ​coloring—and rubbed my head and said, “Ah, you need a haircut.”

And since I always wore my hair super short, he found this hilarious.

Such a cut-up, my dad.

To me he said, “If you were a halfwit, then I’d be proud of you.”

“If I were a halfwit, you’d have to be one too,” I said. “You know. Apples and apple trees and all that.”

Mom said, “If the two of you were halfwits, I’d have put whiskey in this coffee.”

She put a splash in whenever Grandma Ruth dropped by. Not that she was a halfwit. She was just Grandma Ruth. And she liked to show up unannounced. Always unannounced. And she left the same way. Without warning. Coming or going, she was like the wind. The wind or diarrhea.

This was my family. The Henrys. We had expectations. We achieved. We catalogued our successes, and we never needed our hair cut. We were a riot at Thanksgiving too.

Editorial Reviews

05/08/2017
Eighteen-year-old Briggs Henry spends the summer after his high school graduation in South Haven, Mich., as live-in help for a strong-willed 84-year-old Serbian widow, Mrs. Bozic, in this elegant and touching coming-of-age story. Briggs is well aware of his family’s high expectations for him (“We achieved. We catalogued our successes, and we never needed our hair cut”) and has big plans for his own future: namely becoming a successful lawyer who never has to worry about money. His summer with Mrs. B—which includes funeral crashing, encounters with a secretive neighbor named Abigail, and revelations about his family—prompts Briggs to reexamine his goals and his definition of happiness. As chronicled by McCahan (Love and Other Foreign Words), Briggs’s growth is realistically sobering, and many readers will identify with his increasing awareness of his own markers of success. Briggs’s genuine relationship with Mrs. B and her words of wisdom from a life well lived are heartwarming, illustrating the ways that family can expand beyond blood. Ages 12–up. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group. (July)

Publishers Weekly

★ “Observant, sarcastic, compelling, and very funny . . . this thoroughly enjoyable read is a seductive invitation to relax and let life happen.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[An] inviting, thoughtful novel." —The Chicago Tribune

"A dazzlingly hilarious trifecta of awkward growing pains, social gaffes, and the romance that will warm your heart forever . . . Erin McCahan is the reigning queen of summer YA reads." —PopSugar

"Elegant and touching . . . Heartwarming [too], illustrating the ways that family can expand beyond blood." —Publishers Weekly

“If the cover didn't already convince you, The Lake Effect is a vibrant and smart summer read, perfect to tote around on vacation." —Bustle 

"Erin McCahan has done it again with this quintessential summer read guaranteed to make you laugh, cry, and everything in between." —BuzzFeed

"Clever, charming, and sweet, this ode to Lake Michigan, small beach towns, grandmothers, and relationships is the perfect coming-of-age book for the end of the summer. Packed with great characters, snarky dialogue, and buckets of heart, Briggs is a character to root for. Kick back and let the lake effect work its magic." —Booklist Reader
 
“This is YA summer romance at its best: not set on an exotic beach or the tourist traps of Europe, but rather right here at home in our own backyards." —HelloGiggles

"McCahan writes clever and charming characters . . . The Lake Effect will find readers among the John Green fan set: those who like their teen protagonists brilliant but vulnerable.”—VOYA

“The rare book that fills you with delight from the first page to the last. The Lake Effect is funny and witty and a little bit sad and every word glows with brilliance." —Francisco X. Stork, author of Marcelo in the Real World

“A funny and poignant YA novel about that fun and eye-opening summer between high school and college." —PureWow

"Intriguing . . . Compassionate." —Booklist

"Thought provoking—and at times hilarious . . . A great summer read . . . Recommend this title to those who enjoyed Cara Chow’s Bitter Melon, John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines, and Ned Vizzini’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story." —SLJ

"The perfect smart, beachside read. This is an unforgettable story about a boy who thinks he’s got his future figured out, and a girl who knows what she wants but is scared to get it. The Lake Effect will pull you in like the waves of the lake and won’t let you go until the last satisfying page.” —Stephanie Elliot, author of Sad Perfect
 
“Refreshingly honest and real. Every one of Erin McCahan’s characters rings perfectly unique and true—you’ll laugh with them, struggle with them, and seriously hate to leave them when the book is over. An absolute must-read.” —Elise Allen, New York Times bestselling co-author of Elixir

From the Publisher

06/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—A coming-of-age story about love, life, and creating one's own expectations. Briggs Henry is ambitious and goal-oriented and always meets his family's high standards. He graduated as one of the top students in his high school; he was president of his class and the captain of the baseball team. In the fall, Briggs will attend Michigan State University. The summer before he leaves for college, the teen takes a job as a live-in assistant for an eccentric elderly woman who lives in a large house on the shore of Lake Michigan. He slowly befriends a unique and captivating array of South Haven locals. Briggs's relationships with the various townspeople, including the beautiful and mysterious girl next door and his hilarious employer, have a profound effect. For the first time the protagonist is able to think about what life is really all about and what he, not his family, truly wants. Thought provoking—and at times hilarious—this book is filled with effective imagery that makes it a great summer read. Teens can almost hear the waves of Lake Michigan lapping against the shore in the background of the characters' dialogue. Some moderate drinking and discussion of sex make this novel more appropriate for mature readers. VERDICT Recommend this title to those who enjoyed Cara Chow's Bitter Melon, John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, and Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story.—Ellen Fitzgerald, Naperville Public Library, IL

School Library Journal

★ 2017-05-10
Future millionaire Briggs Henry has his course mapped (law degree and MBA) until an eventful summer as live-in caretaker and handyman for an elderly Serbian widow in a Lake Michigan resort town upends his plans and the bedrock assumptions they rest on. The white teen has learned to work hard and aim high, to adopt his dad's relentlessly upbeat demeanor, always remembering that "failure is not an option." (His hardworking mother mostly keeps her views to herself.) Only grim Grandma Ruth, his dad's mother, makes time to attend Briggs' baseball games (until the bottom of the third inning). Rooted in a stressful past, the family work ethic and mandatory optimism take a toll on Briggs. They've cost him his girlfriend and given him digestive troubles. Now, between chores for eccentric Mrs. B., his new employer, and escorting her to funerals, he succumbs to laid-back, resort-town life and to Abigail, an intriguing white neighbor who questions his goals and expectations of success. Life is unpredictable, she knows; events beyond our control can change everything. All we have is now. Relinquishing his grip on what lies ahead allows Briggs to appreciate this truth—it's an ability he'll soon need. Observant, sarcastic, compelling, and very funny, narrator Briggs is entirely convincing and—ably abetted by an abundance of diverse characters—never less than good company. This thoroughly enjoyable read is a seductive invitation to relax and let life happen. (Fiction. 12-17)

Kirkus Reviews