For about-to-turn-sweet-16 Belly (no one calls her Isabel), summers at the beach is where her real life happens. The rest of the year pales to comings-and-goings of the large rambling seaside house, populated by two best-friend mothers and their two children each for the three months of summer. Belly is the youngest, and the only girl, and she likes that just fine.
This summer, however, everything changes. Belly has lost her glasses, gained a few curves, and is suddenly not the just the little sister figure everyone can ignore. But not only is she older, but that means the boys she has known her whole life are changing too.
Her brother Steven is off to college in the fall, Jeremiah and Conrad, too, are different this summer. She hears tension and even arguments between her mother and her best friend Susannah. And Susannah’s husband who usually appears on weekends never makes a single appearance. Most importantly in her typically self-absorbed teenage world, Belly’s forever-crush on Conrad just might finally be waning, especially when she meets Cam.
Summer is Korean American Jenny Han‘s second novel. While Shug was fluffy fun, Summer is a sighing, dreamy pleasure. Han captures Belly’s achingly feeling-full, most-important-summer-of-her-life with an alternating lightness and aching depth. Closing that final page, you can’t help but take an especially long exhalation, as if you’ve been holding your breath for a long time. Summer is apparently the first of a planned trilogy. Hope volume 2 debuts soonest.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2009
Facebook
Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Nice review! I’ll have to pick both of them up!!
I can’t wait for the next ones to come out! Gotta continue the story!
Ohhh my gooooooodness this book just tickled my tastebuds! i loooved it! i think belly and conrad are a PERFECT for each other! thank you for a great novel !
A number of my adult friends have read this and just giggled and sighed over all that delicious first love angst. Perfect pitch Han has, too, creating these characters. I can’t wait to find out how Belly’s life unfolds, that’s for sure.
I read somewhere about adult readers finding YA novels to be the very best guilty pleasures, but are so embarrassed to be “caught” with such young fare that they’re actually wrapping books in other paper so as to avoid being outed for their seemingly immature reading choices. But hey, when YA novels are THIS good, what’s not to love?
Thanks for visiting the site. And do come back soon!
when i first got my hands on the book shug it was just cuz i had to read a book in class.I really hated reading but when i started to really read this book i couldnt put it down. I was getting in troble in class for reading and not working but it was worth it. Keep up the great work jenny i CANT wait to read this one!!!!!!!!!!!
Pingback: Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream by Jenny Han, illustrated by Julia Kuo | BookDragon
Pingback: It’s Not Summer without You by Jenny Han | BookDragon
Pingback: We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han | BookDragon
Pingback: Author Interview: Jenny Han | BookDragon