Title: It’s Not Summer Without You
Author: Jenny Han
Publication: April 24, 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA Fiction, Teen, Romance
Pages: 304
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Can summer be truly summer without Cousins Beach?
It used to be that Belly counted the days until summer, until she was back at Cousins Beach with Conrad and Jeremiah. But not this year. Not after Susannah got sick again and Conrad stopped caring. Everything that was right and good has fallen apart, leaving Belly wishing summer would never come. But when Jeremiah calls saying Conrad has disappeared, Belly knows what she must do to make things right again. And it can only happen back at the beach house, the three of them together, the way things used to be. If this summer really and truly is the last summer, it should end the way it started—at Cousins Beach.
REVIEW:
Having finished The Summer I Turned Pretty (book one in this series) by Jenny Han, I knew no matter what came of it that I would have to finish this series. So here I am to report I have finished book two and I have so many thoughts! To start, I’m not a big fan of these characters.
Let me explain, because I think Jenny Han is insanely talented. The issue I have is that I feel like these characters do not portray enough emotion to justify the level of love they are talking to each other about. In the first book I felt like I didn’t really learn too much about Conrad because he didn’t speak really at all. Belly was kind of whiney. Jeremiah was there, but not really. Aside from his love confession we really didn’t hear much about him. I feel like book one was Belly growing up a bit. Now we have book two and, for lack of a better phrase, S*** has hit the fan!
I did enjoy the back and forth between Belly and Jeremiah because we learned a lot about Jeremiah with this. We learned more about his feelings and everything that was going on from his point of view. I just really did not feel like we got enough to fall in love with him. I get a lot of hints that Jeremiah is not all that in this series and everyone loves Conrad, but I also did not love Conrad. These boys need some therapy and to work on themselves. I think I really just wanted more. More emotions. More personality. More character development.
The story did pick up a bit and I enjoyed that it moved along a bit more. There was more meat on the bones per se. We had the love story, the past flickering in and out, and the house debacle that really kept this one going. I finished this book in under a day, so there was something about it that kept me reading. Now that I have finished two books, I would recommend these to anyone wanting to read a good YA Fiction or teen drama. Then go watch the show because season two is crazy!! On to book three! Stay tuned!
