Turtle Feet, Surfer’s Beat – A Review

I recently read the book Turtle Feet, Surfer’s Beat by Marina Kuperman. It is a teen romance with a strong environmental theme and back-story and I enjoyed reading it. The story revolves around a teenage girl named Penelope who finds herself in the middle of a tense situation with her parents. They don’t know if their marriage is going to work out and divorce looks like it might be imminent. Her father is a famous photographer that specializes in bringing attention to wildlife crisis and poaching and his work takes him away from home for extended periods of time. When it looks likely that his next assignment might be the last nail in the coffin of his marriage he decides to take his wife and two kids on location with him to Costa Rica. His assignment is to photograph the endangered Leatherback turtles and to keep his kids occupied while he and his wife hash things out they enroll 16 year old Penelope and 12 year of Sammy in a 2 week long volunteer program that helps to protect the turtles during egg laying season.

Penelope has a hard time with all of this as the trip prompted her long time boyfriend to break up with her and volunteer servitude is not her idea of fun. Things change for her though when she falls in love…with the turtles she is protecting and a surfer boy named Kendall. She discovers that she is deeply passionate about helping to save the Leatherback turtles species and she finally meets a boy that respects and appreciates her.

The book brought back some fond teen memories of my own…many of which involved water sports and beaches. Reading about teenage drama gave me more than few chuckles. And their first kiss..oh the memories….sigh. It made me remember my first kiss with hubby…on a ski trip in the back of a huge conversion van while his mom was driving. We had been seeing each other for 2 years and had never kissed. That day I just leaned over and kissed him and it lasted for oh….5 seconds. He was totally shocked but then it kind of opened the floodgates cause he grabbed me and kissed me this time and it lasted for at least an hour. Thank goodness his mom was totally cool. Definitely the best kiss ever.

But I digress. The book has a very sweet love story. There was just one issue I had with it. I began to feel very uncomfortable when they enter into a sexual relationship. I was not raised in an environment where having sex at sixteen (or even outside of marriage) was acceptable so the casual way it is handled in the book was very foreign to me. I don’t recall the teen romances I used to read having any sex in them but maybe times have changed. ;)

Other than that detail…the book was very fun. And as a gal who loves surfing, the look into the surfer’s world was a lot of fun. I think it awesome that a teen romance has included an environmental theme. You can buy Turtle Feet, Surfer’s Beat in e-book format.