Sugar and Ice

Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2010: In Sugar and Ice figure skating dreams come true when Claire Boucher is spotted at her small town's Maple Show by a big-time skating coach. Claire isn't sure she's ready for competitive skating, but a scholarship to the elite Lake Placid training camp is too great an opportunity to pass up. Making friends, handling bullies in her skating class, and the high standards of her demanding new coach--who insists she can land a double toe loop--are challenges Claire must face alone, far from the comfort of her family's maple farm activities and her childhood friends. Sugar and Ice is a sweet but never saccharine story of a small-town girl who follows a dream and learns she is capable of more than she ever imagined both on and off the ice. --Seira Wilson