Someone Else's Summer

March 1, 2017
A search for meaning after her sister's sudden death blossoms into a romantic road trip.After her older sister, Storm--the one-of-a-kind, Polaroid-loving, list-obsessed, child-cancer survivor--dies in a car accident the day she graduates from high school, Anna is left in a daze, mindlessly shifting between her lifeguarding job and local parties as she tries to fathom her loss. When she discovers Storm's final summer bucket list, she finds a new sense of purpose: complete every item with boy-next-door and Storm's best friend, Cameron, by her side. As the two white teens road trip to North Carolina and cross off successive items--including getting a tattoo for Anna and crashing a wedding--they quickly realize their feelings for each other run deeper than their shared connection with Storm. While the tale will appeal to teens looking for a budding warm-weather romance, it doesn't succeed on deeper levels. Readers learn little about Anna except that she is beautiful, which strangers unrealistically note at random, and the pacing feels misguided. Paragraphs are dedicated to detailing Anna's best friend's bedroom decorations and verbatim text conversations with her aunt while reducing potentially meaningful car-ride conversations to cliched summaries: "We laughed and cried, remembering Storm." Plenty of romantic moments will make starry-eyed readers swoon, but what could have been an important story about confronting raw grief after a sibling's death ultimately falls short. (Fiction. 14-18)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Anna's sister Storm tragically dies in a single-person car crash on graduation night. Mourning Storm, Anna retreats to her sister's room and finds a list of unrelated activities to be completed during the summer. Anna and her best friend, boy-next-door Cameron, set out to complete Storm's list. Some tasks are easy, such as skinny-dipping, but others prove more difficult and, ultimately, enlightening, such as sleeping in a college dorm and falling in love. Cameron and Anna's childhood friendship morphs into romance as the summer moves on, leading to a passionate encounter, with many predictable tropes. Cameron, however, holds a secret that threatens to destroy everything. While a bit unbelievable in places, the road trip story is a romantic summer escape. Teens will either not notice the predictability or not care as they become engrossed in Anna's growing acceptance of the tough decisions of adulthood. VERDICT Hard-core romance seekers will enjoy, while others will yearn for more originality. Purchase where romance and road trip novels are popular.-Lisa Ehrle, Falcon Creek Middle School, CO

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017
Grades 9-12 Bateman's emotional debut is a mishmash of several YA tropes: bucket lists, dead siblings, and boy-next-door romance. Before she became a popular high-school cheerleader, Anna was closer to her quirky Irish twin, Storm. But when Storm's accidental death on her high-school graduation night leaves Anna reeling, it's her longtime neighbor, Storm's best friend Cameron, who's there for her. Cameron willingly joins along on a road trip from their town in Iowa to Outer Banks, North Carolina, together crossing off items on Storm's bucket list. Parasailing, tattoos, skinny-dipping, andsomewhat predictablyfalling in love. Anna's grief is never all-consuming: there's an ebb and flow that feels natural to teenagers, so driven by their moment-to-moment urges. Treading much of the same territory of Jandy Nelson's The Sky Is Everywhere (2010), Bateman's book lacks its emotional heft, powerful prose, and earned epiphanies. Still, the melodramatic subject matter and romantic scenes with Anna and Cameron will appeal to fans of contemporary novels in the vein of Jessi Kirby and Morgan Matson.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018
Beautiful, popular Anna has always idolized her offbeat older sister, Storm. After Storm dies in a single-car accident on her graduation night, Anna, bereft, follows an impulse to tackle the summer bucket list Storm left behind. This realistic novel has an earnest tone and a sweet romance, but nothing sets it apart from the growing pack of cathartic teen road-trip stories.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)