A Celtic Night: A Fifteen-Year-Old Girl's Modern Retelling of Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream Book

When my sister recommended the book, "Celtic Night" by Bridget O'Dwyer, to me I thought that I was going to hate it. Although I was proven wrong, this is now one of my favorite books. This book is "A fifteen-year-old girl's modern retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream". It is a combination of a Shakespeare story and a girls personal experiences from when she spent six moths in Ireland living with her family and learning about Irish culture and ways of life.
Sarah is a fifteen-year-old girl from Syracuse, NY who is ready for a change. It takes a lot of convincing but eventually she is able to convince her parents to let her spend a semester in Ireland. Sarah's father was born and raised in Ireland and all of his family still lives there. So they make arrangements for Sarah to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins and attend school there. After a few weeks of preparation, Sarah is off to Ireland. Adjusting to life with an Irish family is hard at first but, she quickly forms close bonds with cousins and friends from school. Throughout her trip she emails her friends to keep in touch, get advice on tough situations, and tell about all her amazing adventures. In her time in Ireland she takes school trips, meets boys, takes trips with friends, has normal friend and family drama, gets a job, and creates unforgettable memories.
The ending of this book is bittersweet. It recaps on all of her amazing adventures and how she prepared to go home. It tells the last things she got to do with her new Irish friends and future plans with friends and family. At the end of the book it went into a lot of detail on how she felt and how she was dealing with having to say goodbye to the people she had grown close with. Reading the end of this book made me sad because throughout the story you felt like you were there and had experienced and it is hard to imagine what it would be difficult to have to give all that up. Although the ending was a little sad it was also my favorite part of the book because she really explained what she thought of Ireland and life there.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Irish culture has been a huge part of my life since I was five years old so it was interesting to read about what it would be like to live there. I haven't read any other books like this one but, I would like to try and find one. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books that like teenage girl drama and want to find out about another culture. I was pleasant surprised with this book.