Kanani helps out in her family's store: Akina's Shave Ice and Sweet Treats. I love the depiction of island life in both books. Everyone knows everyone and they all work together like a community.
Kanani's books both deal with two problems. The first is a problem with another female character. The second is a problem involving an animal.
In her first book, Kanani is playing host to her cousin Rachel, who's from New York City. Rachel's mom just got remarried and Rachel will be staying with the Akinas for a month, while her mother and stepfather have their honeymoon and then move the family to a new apartment.
Kanani and Rachel get off to a rough start, each thinking they need to talk up their home to make it seem good enough for the other girl. Rachel is also very withdrawn, having a lot on her mind about her current life changes, but not wanting to talk about it. It takes a mistake with their diaries, which happen to be identical, for Kanani to bring up Rachel's misgivings about her new life and Rachel becomes a much more likeable character for having talked about her worries.
The girls see a Hawaiian monk seal, which is an endangered species, and get involved in helping her, as well as becoming more interested in helping all monk seals.
The girl-related problem this time is the Best Friend Fight. Ugh. I'm never a fan of the Best Friend Fight. Kanani's bestie Celina is obsessed with surfing, which we saw in the first book, but Kanani is struggling with learning to the point that she really hates it. Celina agrees to help out at the shave ice cart a couple hours a day before the girls go surfing, but starts cutting out early, surfing with a new girl that she met that's in town for an arts festival. Kanani is of course hurt by this. She really cares about the seals, so I can see why! Personally, I think Celina's a bit shallow. Yes, it comes out at the end that she's really serious about surfing and was preparing to compete, and she does admit she was wrong in assuming Kanani loved it as much as she did, but come on, chick. Yeah, you help with your parents' restaurant, but Kanani helps with her parents' store. Both of you work. If you can't sacrifice a couple hours of your day to help your best friend with a good cause after you said you would, you're kind of a shitty friend. It's not like it's for all of summer. I do like Jo, the other surfing girl. She seems really cool, so it wasn't the best move on Kanani's part to automatically be jealous, but at the same time, they're doing something she hates, so yeah, I get her side of it. Naturally, they work it out at the end.
The animal problem is that Kanani's rooster disappears, so she's upset about that for several chapters. But he turns up at the home of one of the older residents that she's friends with and seems so happy there that she lets him stay.
Kanani's interactions with the older people are probably my favorite part of this book. We met one of them in the first book and she provided some excellent wisdom and she does the same again, but we also meet a few more people, too. I like that Kanani is so quick to help everyone and it puts her even more apart from Celina, who's only furthering her own needs. Kanani is much more selfless and it's her best character trait.
I enjoyed these two books a lot, despite the rather overdone girl has trouble with other girl themes. I love the depiction of a quiet Hawaiian life and a lot of the characters in it.
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