Summer '17 Book 5

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

A couple of years ago, my daughter asked my son to get her some Sarah Dessen books for her birthday. Like the awesome brother he is, he complied. She read them, then "donated" them to my classroom library. I have been meaning to get around to them, but haven't and now they're locked in my classroom cabinet for the summer. So, yesterday when I was buying books, I had to check with my daughter to make sure this wasn't one of the ones we already had.

Having no frame of reference for Dessen, I didn't know what to expect. This book is short--just under two hundred pages, so it took next to no time to read. The blurb on the back was enough to make me interested, but not enough to have a clue as to what this book was about. Given that it mentions the older sister's ex-boyfriend coming back, I thought there might be some ex-boyfriend/little sister scandalous relationship, but I was wrong. There was a lot going on in these few pages, and what held it together is what it's like to be a teenaged girl with a lot of changes going on. That's it.

The book starts and ends with a wedding, and takes place over the course of, roughly, two months. The wedding at the beginning of the book is that of Haven and Ashley's father, a sportscaster on the local news, and the weather girl at the same station (who is the reason their parents divorced). The wedding at the end is that of Haven's older sister, Ashley.  Over the course of the two months, Haven works at a job she hates, her mother is looking to maybe go to Europe for a month with her singles group, her mother is looking to sell their house, and Haven reconnects with the one of her sister's ex-boyfriends that she liked, Sumner.

Haven likes Sumner, but not in a romantic way. She likes him because when he was dating Ashley, Ashley was good to Haven, and therefore life was good. All that changed when Ashley broke up with Sumner. Or, at least that is how it appears to Haven.

So much is going on in Haven's life right now, and everyone is chalking it up to the attention being paid to Ashley because of the wedding. I'm sure that has something to do with it, but the way I saw it was that there were just too many changes for Haven at the time, and she was having trouble coping. I wish there'd been more substance to the book, but there just wasn't. That is not to say that this wasn't an enjoyable read. If I were the type to read a book on the beach, this would be the type of book I would bring: something that doesn't ask a lot of the reader in terms of understanding. If you're looking for a not complex, easy read, this is it.