Review: COOL FOR THE SUMMER by Dahlia Adler

 

COOL FOR THE SUMMER

by Dahlia Adler

Publication Date: May 11, 2021

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Pages: 272

Source: Netgalley

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Synopsis

 

Lara's had eyes for exactly one person throughout her three years of high school: Chase Harding. He's tall, strong, sweet, a football star, and frankly, stupid hot. Oh, and he's talking to her now. On purpose and everything. Maybe...flirting, even? No, wait, he's definitely flirting, which is pretty much the sum of everything Lara's wanted out of life.

Except she’s haunted by a memory. A memory of a confusing, romantic, strangely perfect summer spent with a girl named Jasmine. A memory that becomes a confusing, disorienting present when Jasmine herself walks through the front doors of the school to see Lara and Chase chatting it up in front of the lockers.

Lara has everything she ever wanted: a tight-knit group of friends, a job that borders on cool, and Chase, the boy of her literal dreams. But if she's finally got the guy, why can't she stop thinking about the girl?

Cool for the Summer is a story of self-discovery and new love. It’s about the things we want and the things we need. And it’s about the people who will let us be who we are.

MY THOUGHTS

The title COOL FOR THE SUMMER and the cover are what made me want to read this book. The color palette and the fun sunglasses did it for me. It screamed: "I'm going to be fun, READ ME!"

COOL FOR THE SUMMER was just as fun and enjoyable that I had hoped it would be. It was a quick read that brought both the laughter and the longing. I loved the friendship that developed between Lara and Jasmine and how well they knew how to be with each other.

There were moments I was worried about Chase's intentions with dating Lara. Everyone knew about her years long crush and I wondered if he was playing with her emotions or did he really like her. Thankfully that question was answered early on and I didn't have to worry. Chase isn't the jerk that he could have been portrayed as.

I wanted to know more about Lara aside from her relationships with her friends and Chase and Jasmine. What makes her who she is? I think there is still so much more to know about her than what we were given in the story.

Each of her friends have their own lives separate from their friendships. One character who I really want to know is Kiki. What is her story? She's just so interesting with her podcasts and her sleuthing. I hope there's a Kiki book in the future!

COOL FOR THE SUMMER is a great book to kick off your fun summer reading. It's a story about romance and friendships and it's full of surprises that will keep readers turning the pages.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from the publisher for review consideration. I was not compensated in any way other than the e-ARC provided. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: THE MALL by Megan McCafferty

 

THE MALL

by Megan McCafferty

Publication Date: July 28, 2020

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Pages: 320

Source: Publisher | Netgalley

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Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall.

The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans...

Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.

My Thoughts

I'm a long time fan of Megan McCafferty's Jessica Darling Series and did a big ol' happy book shimmy when she announced her highly anticipated (by me) new book THE MALL. I didn't care that it would be a couple of years before it was released, I was just excited that we would get a new book from her.

What I loved most about this book was the nostalgia and that was one of the main reasons I wanted to read it. I mean just the title THE MALL created enough excitement. I immediately thought of a reimagined Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I loved the use of icons Frank and Kathy for Cassie's parents and Tommy and Vince the "Motley Crue" who hid a treasure. This almost went over my head, but when I realized what McCafferty did, I had a great laugh. And OF COURSE the 90210, the original 90210, shout-outs just took me back. 

It brought back fun memories of middle school and high school and hanging out at the mall with friends. My first job was in a mall and my friends even modeled the "latest fashions" for a popular chain store. I'd almost forgotten about that until just writing it here. Oh, good times. 

THE MALL was a funny, often silly, and sometimes scandalous walk down memory lane.  Fans of Megan McCafferty will enjoy this book while they wait for the release of Jessica Darling Makeover Editions!

Disclaimer:  I received this e-ARC from the publisher for review consideration. I was not compensated in any way other than the e-ARC provided. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: SIX GOODBYES WE NEVER SAID by Candace Ganger

SIX GOODBYES WE NEVER SAID

by Candace Ganger

Publication Date: September 24, 2019

Published by St. Martin's | Wednesday Books

Pages: 320

Source: Publisher | Blog Tour

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Synopsis

Two teens meet after tragedy and learn about love, loss, and letting go

Naima Rodriguez doesn’t want your patronizing sympathy as she grieves her father, her hero—a fallen Marine. She’ll hate you forever if you ask her to open up and remember him “as he was,” though that’s all her loving family wants her to do in order to manage her complex OCD and GAD. She’d rather everyone back the-eff off while she separates her Lucky Charms marshmallows into six, always six, Ziploc bags, while she avoids friends and people and living the life her father so desperately wanted for her. 

Dew respectfully requests a little more time to process the sudden loss of his parents. It's causing an avalanche of secret anxieties, so he counts on his trusty voice recorder to convey the things he can’t otherwise say aloud. He could really use a friend to navigate a life swimming with pain and loss and all the lovely moments in between. And then he meets Naima and everything’s changed—just not in the way he, or she, expects. 

Candace Ganger's Six Goodbyes We Never Said is no love story. If you ask Naima, it’s not even a like story. But it is a story about love and fear and how sometimes you need a little help to be brave enough to say goodbye.

My Thoughts

I received SIX GOODBYES WE NEVER SAID as part of a blog tour that took place last month. I missed the tour, obviously as I'm just now sharing my thoughts. It took me longer to read than I anticipated. I've been considering what I wanted to share about it here. It's one of those books that I'm afraid that it won't come across just how much I loved it and why I think others should read it. This is me giving it a shot.

I loved the humor in the dialogue and the interactions of the characters. Naima and Dew with both a delight to read about. I especially enjoyed Dew and his adoptive family and his relationship with his sister, Faith. There is a lot of open communication and attempts at understanding one another and validating feelings. And then there is Faith and her Nature Boy Rick Flair "woo-ing" - that had me in stitches.   

I appreciate this story for its sensitivity with characters who have experienced great losses and the recognition that everyone grieves in their on time, in their own way. The death of their parents isn't something you can get over. Instead, it becomes a part of them and shapes how they experience the rest of the world. 

Memorable Quote:

"If we acknowledge our right to feel like hell, for as long as we need to, maybe others will give us a little more breathing room, you know?" - said to Naima by her grandma JJ.

This book really touched my heart. Like another book I read earlier this summer - THE OTHER SIDE by Kim Holden, it really spoke to the idea that we need to take care with other people's feelings. 

It is my hope that readers find compassion for these characters, as well as for the people in their own lives who are going through some tough times and experiences. And please, please take the time to read the Author's Note at the beginning of the book. As it sometimes happens, the note becomes a favorite part of the book just as it did with this one. In case it needs to be said (or written), I loved THE SIX GOODBYES WE NEVER SAID and I am so glad that I read it!

About the Author:

Candace Ganger is the author of Six Goodbyes We Never Said and The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash as well as a contributing writer for HelloGiggles and obsessive marathoner. Aside from having past lives as a singer, nanotechnology website editor, and world’s worst vacuum sales rep, she’s also ghostwritten hundreds of projects for companies, best-selling fiction and award-winning nonfiction authors alike. She lives in Ohio with her family.

Twitter: @candylandgang + @WednesdayBooks

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from the publisher for review as part of a review tour. I was not compensated in any way other than the e-ARC provided. Quotes contained within the review are from the e-ARC and may differ from the final published version.Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review: I HATE EVERYONE BUT YOU by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin

I HATE EVERYONE BUT YOU

by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin

Publication Date: Septembe 5, 2019

Published by Wednesday Books

Pages: 344

Source: Library

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Synopsis

Dear Best Friend,
I can already tell that I will hate everyone but you.
Sincerely,
Ava Helmer
(that brunette who won’t leave you alone)

We're still in the same room, you weirdo.
Stop crying.
G

So begins a series of texts and emails sent between two best friends, Ava and Gen, as they head off to their first semesters of college on opposite sides of the country. From first loves to weird roommates, heartbreak, self-discovery, coming out and mental health, the two of them document every wild and awkward moment to each other. But as each changes and grows into her new life, will their friendship be able to survive the distance?

My Thoughts

I'm sure that I uttered the words in the title I HATE EVERYONE BUT YOU to my best friend multiple times throughout my life and it makes me laugh even now. Did I really hate everyone? No, but at times it sure did feel like it and those memories are what sparked my interest in reading this book about best friends whose lives are separated when they go to college.

I really liked this book a lot and found the changes in Ava and Gen's friendships relatable to what I experienced with my best friend after we graduated high school. Our lives became filled with other people and we weren't attached at the hip twenty- four seven. Our friendship changed and became strained, and like Ava and Gen, we struggled with who we were and who we were becoming.

What I liked:

• that it's a story about best friends 
• the format - emails and texts
• reading about the college experience from each perspective
• the awareness of Ava's mental illness and how it is discussed openly 
• Gen's discovery of self - she doesn't have it all figured out and at 18 she shouldn't
• how I related to this story

Laugh-Out-Loud Quote:

P.S. I think college is a pyramid scheme. Think about it.

Now that's funny. I enjoyed this book and the characters Ava and Gen and I'm happy to know that their story continues in the follow-up book PLEASE SEND HELP. I know that I'll read that one soon. 

Disclaimer:  I obtained a copy of this title from my local library and am providing my honest review.  I was not compensated in any way for providing this review. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

NOT NOW, NOT EVER by Lily Anderson - Read an Excerpt

NOT NOW, NOT EVER: A Novel

By Lily Anderson

Published by Wednesday Books

Publication Date: November 21, 2017

320 pages

About the book:

The sequel to The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest.

Elliot Gabaroche is very clear on what she isn't going to do this summer.

1. She isn't going to stay home in Sacramento, where she'd have to sit through her stepmother's sixth community theater production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
2. She isn't going to mock trial camp at UCLA.
3. And she certainly isn't going to the Air Force summer program on her mother's base in Colorado Springs. As cool as it would be to live-action-role-play Ender's Game, Ellie's seen three generations of her family go through USAF boot camp up close, and she knows that it's much less Luke/Yoda/"feel the force," and much more one hundred push-ups on three days of no sleep. And that just isn't appealing, no matter how many Xenomorphs from Alien she'd be able to defeat afterwards.

What she is going to do is pack up her attitude, her favorite Octavia Butler novels, and her Jordans, and go to summer camp. Specifically, a cutthroat academic-decathlon-like competition for a full scholarship to Rayevich College, the only college with a Science Fiction Literature program. And she's going to start over as Ever Lawrence, on her own terms, without the shadow of all her family’s expectations. Because why do what’s expected of you when you can fight other genius nerds to the death for a shot at the dream you’re sure your family will consider a complete waste of time?

This summer's going to be great.

READ AN EXCERPT

When we perfect commercial time travel, everyone in the past is going to be pissed at us. It’s not only that their quiet, sepia-toned lives will be inundated with loud-mouthed giants. And it’s not even the issue that language is a living organism, so all communication will be way more problematic than anyone ever thinks about.
     It’s jet packs.
     At some point, someone is going to ask about jet packs, and no amount of bragging about clean water and vaccines and free Wi-Fi will be able to distract them. Even if you went back before the In- dustrial Revolution, someone is going to want to know if we’ve all made ourselves pairs of Icarus wings.
     Defrost Walt Disney and he’ll ask to be put back in the fridge until Tomorrowland is real. Go back to the eighties and everyone’s going to want to know about hoverboards.
     Hell, go back to yesterday, find your own best friend, and they’d still ask, “Tomorrow’s the day we get flying cars, right?”
     People want miracles. They want magic. They want to freak- ing fly.
     Unrelated: Did you know that crossing state lines on a train is pretty much the most boring and uncomfortable thing ever?
     Despite sounding vaguely poetic, the midnight train to Oregon wasn’t much for scenery. Unfortunately, running away tends to work best in the middle of the night, especially when one’s cousins have a curfew to make and can’t wait on the platform with you.
     Twelve hours, two protein bars, and one sunrise later, the view was rolling brown fields that turned into dilapidated houses with collapsing fences and sun-bleached Fisher Price play sets. Appar- ently, the whole “wrong side of the tracks” thing wasn’t a myth. Everything the train passed was a real bummer.
     One should always have something sensational to read on the train, whispered Oscar Wilde, sounding remarkably like my stepmom. With my headphones drowning out the screech of the tracks, I reached into my backpack, pushing past the heavy stack of books and ziplock bags of half-eaten snacks, to the bottom. Tucked be- tween the yellowed pages of my battered copy of Starship Troopers was a folded square of white printer paper. I tried to smooth it over my leg, but it snapped back into its heavy creases.

     Dear Ever,

     On behalf of Rayevich College and our sister school, the Messina Academy for the Gifted, it is my great pleasure to offer you a place at Camp Onward. At Onward, you will spend three weeks learning alongside forty-seven other accomplished high school students from all over the West Coast as you prepare for the annual Tarrasch Melee. The winners of the Melee will be granted a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to Rayevich College . . .

     The page was starting to wear thin in the corners from my fin- gers digging into it whenever it stopped feeling real enough. The packing list that had once been stapled to it was even worse off, high- lighted and checkmarked and underlined. I’d had to put that one inside of an N. K. Jemisin hardcover so that the extra weight could smash it flat.
     I ran my thumb over the salutation again. Dear Ever.
     I shivered, remembering how my hands had trembled as I’d read those words for the first time, stamped to the front of an envelope with the Rayevich seal in the corner. It meant that everything had worked. It meant that freedom was as simple as a checked box on an Internet application.
     The train lurched to a stop. I shoved the note back inside of Star- ship Troopers and popped out my headphones just in time to hear the conductor’s garbled voice say, “Eugene station.”
     I staggered down to the platform, my laptop case and my back- pack weighing me down like uneven scales. I sucked in fresh air, not even caring that it tasted like cement and train exhaust. It was cooler here than it was back home. California asphalt held in heat and let it off in dry, tar-scented bursts.
     Oregon had a breeze. And pine trees. Towering evergreens that could have bullied a Christmas tree into giving up its lunch money. We didn’t get evergreens like that at home. My neighborhood was lined in decorative suburban foliage. By the time I got back, our oak tree would be starting to think about shedding its sticky leaves on the windshield of my car.
     As a new wave of passengers stomped onto the train, I retrieved the massive rolling suitcase that Beth had ordered off of the Inter- net for me. It was big enough to hold a small person, as my brother had discovered when he’d decided to use it to sled down the stairs.
     I’d miss that little bug.
     There were clusters of people scattered across the platform, some shouting to each other over the dull roar of the engine. I watched an old woman press two small children into her bosom and a hipster couple start groping each other’s cardigans.
     In the shade of the ticket building, a light-skinned black guy had his head bowed over his cell phone. His hair was shorn down to his scalp, leaving a dappling of curl seedlings perfectly edged around his warm brown temples. He was older than I was, definitely college age. He had that finished look, like he’d grown into his shoulders and gotten cozy with them. A yellow lanyard was swinging across the big green D emblazoned on his T-shirt.
     “Hey,” I called to him, rolling my suitcase behind me. My laptop case swayed across my stomach in tandem with my backpack scrap- ing over my spine, making it hard not to waddle. “Are you from Rayevich?”
     The guy looked up, startled, and shoved his phone into the pocket of his jeans. He swept forward, remembering to smile a minute too late. All of his white teeth gleamed in the sunshine.
     “Are you Ever?” His smile didn’t waver, but I could feel him processing my appearance. Big, natural hair, baggy Warriors T-shirt, cutoff shorts, clean Jordans. Taller than him by at least two inches.
     “Yeah,” I said. And then, to take some of the pressure off, “You were looking for a white girl, right?”
     His smile went dimply in the corners, too sincere to be pervy. “I’m happy to be wrong.”
     “Ever Lawrence,” I said, hoping that I’d practiced it enough that it didn’t clunk out of my mouth. It was strange having so few sylla- bles to get through. Elliot Gabaroche was always a lot to dump on another human being.
     “Cornell Aaron,” the college boy said, sticking his hand out. He had fingers like my father’s, tapered, with clean, round nails. I spent the firm two-pump handshake wondering if he also got no-polish manicures. “I’ll be one of your counselors at Onward. It’s a quick drive from here.”
     He took the handle of my suitcase without preamble and led the way toward the parking lot. I followed, my pulse leaping in the same two syllables that had wriggled between the folds of my brain and stamped out of my shoes and pumped through my veins for months.
     Bunbury.
     It was a stupid thing to drive you crazy, but here I was: running away from home in the name of Oscar Wilde.

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About the author:

LILY ANDERSON is an elementary school librarian and Melvil Dewey fangirl with an ever-growing collection of musical theater tattoos and Harry Potter ephemera. She lives in Northern California. She is also the author of The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You.