Review: This One Summer

WARNING: The following blog posts contain spoilers for the novel under review, ranging from mild to heart wrenchingly major. If you have yet to read this novel and dislike being spoiled, leave now and return upon completion.

If you HAVE read this novel (or just don't give a crap about spoilers), then continue on.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

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HELLO, FRIENDS! Today we're going to be talking about This One Summer by Canadian cousin duo Jillian and Mariko Tamaki.

THE PLOT-Y BIT

Awago Beach is your typical beach town community, filled with local shops, tourist attractions, and several cabins within walking distance of the ocean. Rose and Windy have been best friends, practically sisters, since Rose and her family started visiting the cabin when she was five. With Windy's cabin mere minutes away, summers have been filled with joint family campfires, swimming expeditions in the ocean, and trips to the local museum in town for as long as Rose can remember.

But this summer, things are different. Tensions are running high between Rose's parents, and a crush on a local leads Rose to discover a whole new world of drama with the teenagers of Awago. This year, Rose will need Windy and their friendship more than ever to survive this, the hardest summer of her life to date.

THE REVIEW-Y BIT

I don't even know what to say about this book, to be honest. I just...really didn't like it.

I wasn't particularly fond of Rose and Windy. I couldn't really relate to them, and I felt like their friendship seemed really shallow. The plot synopsis describes Windy as "the little sister Rose never had", but I really didn't get that vibe from them. None of the few fights they had were properly dealt with or resolved, which irritated me to no end. I just couldn't force myself to care about what happened to them--or any of the side characters, for that matter.

Aside from that, all of the major conflicts in this book seemed to happen to everyone around the two friends, but didn't really seem to affect them as characters. Yes, Rose's parents were fighting a lot, and we saw her reaction to it, but overall it felt like she was more of an observer than anything. The conflict with Rose's mom and her miscarriage the previous summer was probably the only aspect of the story that I was really interested in, and even as the fighting and tension that came as a direct result of that filled the book, the actual reasoning was, I felt, just kind of swept under the rug. The entire book was filled with allusions to this mysterious event that her mother went through, and by the end we got a very brief recount as to what happened...and then BOOM. Over. It did a real bad number on the pacing of the overall story.

(Plus, whatever happened to Rose's parents? I saw no apology, no conversation...nothing. Talk about frustrating.)

Meanwhile, the other main conflict--the teen pregnancy scandal that was sweeping through Awago--held -10% of my attention. I cared even less about the teens in the local beach town community than I cared about Rose and Windy--which, trust me, is a very hard thing to accomplish.

Overall, I found the plot dreary and boring, nothing like I'd expect a summer read such as this to be. Most of the characters were flat and uninteresting, and the ones that managed to catch my eye stayed on the sidelines as much as possible. Maybe if the story were longer, it would have had the time it needed to meet my expectations--but because of how short it was, the pacing was wonky and all over the place. Definitely not something I would recommend.

THE RATING-Y BIT

Two stars; and even that, to me, is a tad generous. The only thing that saved the rating was the art style; charming and wonderfully detailed. If only the story held up along with it...


Until later,

- Justyne