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juliezantopoulos's review
4.0
This book had some problems...some issues that I think were pretty problematic but at the same time holy gosh did this hit me in so many feels!
This is a story about family, and finding yourself, and that 'safe' place that you come home to even if it's not really your home that nothing bad can touch...until it does. I have a place like that and I understand that feeling even if it's not on a beach like this one. And I understand large families with less than perfect relationships and this book covered those things perfectly.
The book has diversity with a deaf sibling and a seemingly bi-sexual character, which was cool. I actually really loved the ASL and the deaf representation in the book. The sibling dynamic was so amazing. It was heartbreaking and flawed and beautiful and strong (even in the bad times). I seriously can't get enough of these kids!
What I didn't like was that there were multiple times in this book where couples paired off with serious age differences. There was sex between a 15 & 19 yr old that was made to seem okay because the younger was a boy. There was a rape victim who was described once as "pulling the rape face". There was also one "couple" who never got physical but do say they're going "steady" and the boys is a freshman in college and the girl is 13!! I mean, am I the only one totally freaked out by this? Same 13 yr old girl was hyper-sexualized at 11 & 12 as well by her siblings, family friends, and herself.
I'm very aware of the flaws in this book (mentioned above) and how pretentious and annoying the overuse of the Camus quotes are but all in all the study in family and grief/heartache/togetherness was just so moving. I spent the last chapters just bawling my eyes out and absolutely haunted. So, yes, I'm aware that it has problems and despite those problems, I still loved this book!
Reread in order to annotate for a traveling book and holy shit-I cried so hard, again even skim reading to make my notes. This story will never not break me.
This is a story about family, and finding yourself, and that 'safe' place that you come home to even if it's not really your home that nothing bad can touch...until it does. I have a place like that and I understand that feeling even if it's not on a beach like this one. And I understand large families with less than perfect relationships and this book covered those things perfectly.
The book has diversity with a deaf sibling and a seemingly bi-sexual character, which was cool. I actually really loved the ASL and the deaf representation in the book. The sibling dynamic was so amazing. It was heartbreaking and flawed and beautiful and strong (even in the bad times). I seriously can't get enough of these kids!
What I didn't like was that there were multiple times in this book where couples paired off with serious age differences. There was sex between a 15 & 19 yr old that was made to seem okay because the younger was a boy. There was a rape victim who was described once as "pulling the rape face". There was also one "couple" who never got physical but do say they're going "steady" and the boys is a freshman in college and the girl is 13!! I mean, am I the only one totally freaked out by this? Same 13 yr old girl was hyper-sexualized at 11 & 12 as well by her siblings, family friends, and herself.
I'm very aware of the flaws in this book (mentioned above) and how pretentious and annoying the overuse of the Camus quotes are but all in all the study in family and grief/heartache/togetherness was just so moving. I spent the last chapters just bawling my eyes out and absolutely haunted. So, yes, I'm aware that it has problems and despite those problems, I still loved this book!
Reread in order to annotate for a traveling book and holy shit-I cried so hard, again even skim reading to make my notes. This story will never not break me.
paperbookmarks's review
4.0
Hannah Moskowitz has a unique but powerful writing style that I loved. The novel was set over four years and the characters really grew and you could tell this from the subtle changes in style. It was incredible with its grittiness and realness, there was no "insta-love" and it was very real-life. I do feel it could've been a little more emotional, but that could've been because it was spread out over four years so you did really get to know the characters go through the emotions; you only knew how they felt in the summer.
astoryuntold's review
2.0
I wanted to love it so badly and I'm really sorry but I guess it wasn't for me. I found it a tad pretentious (have you met a lot of teenage boys reciting Camus? Let's get real.) which made the characters not relatable and the story not believable. I may try other moskowitz books in the future, but this one just didn't do it for me
jroxy13's review
2.0
I hope Moskowitz reads this book later and cringes. There is some good writing in here, surrounded by messy narrative, random plotting, haphazard characterization, and fucking Camus. Seriously, the Camus thing would have been obnoxious, but acceptable in a different style book, but in one that aimed to focus so on the realistic dysfunction of family, this comes across as completely absurd and eyeroll-inducing. This is one that she should have set aside and come back to edit later in life when it could have become a good book.
vtmichelle's review
4.0
WHY!!?? The ending killed me, or to be more exact, the end of the third summer killed me.
- Relationships between brother's, I have a thing for it.
- Big, loud family. Love that as well, makes me think of my own family and how loud and crazy we can be.
- The summer theme was perfect. I started reading this book on the first sitting-outside-without-wearing-a-jacket-day of the year.
- The ending killed me though, did not see that coming.
- Relationships between brother's, I have a thing for it.
- Big, loud family. Love that as well, makes me think of my own family and how loud and crazy we can be.
- The summer theme was perfect. I started reading this book on the first sitting-outside-without-wearing-a-jacket-day of the year.
- The ending killed me though, did not see that coming.
featherbooks's review
1.0
Seems sophomoric, plastic characters, or just not my cup of tea. Read about thirty pages and moved on. As Nancy Pearl says, that's all the pages I have to invest.
charlotte2609's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
themaddiest's review
3.0
Over the course of four summers at his family’s beach house, Chase McGill grows up. He falls in love, discovers sex and lust, and watches as his family changes and evolves in front of his eyes. He and his siblings mark their lives by their summers, but as they grow up, their relationship to the beach house and to each other begins to change.
Hannah Moskowitz is still in college, and this is her second novel. Setting aside my serious envy about that particular life achievement, there’s no doubt that she’s a talented writer. The story she’s crafted here is a dark, complex, layered look at the slow disintegration of a family and what happens as a result. Full of prose that is at times sparse and very often beautiful, this is a novel that is meant to be read slowly and savored.
Chase is a character who is torn between clinging to his childhood and the nostalgia he holds for the way his family once was while also racing towards adulthood. In this way he eclipses his older brother Noah as the caretaker of the rest of their siblings, and he struggles with trying to be the glue that holds his family together. As Chase grows up over the course of the four summers at the beach house, he realizes that despite his nickname “Everboy,” he cannot remain a child forever.
Moskowitz is at her strongest when exploring the family dynamics of the McGills. It’s clear that Moskowitz is interested in dysfunctional families. Everyone in the family has a problem, and the problem is making them pretty unhappy. The misery of his parents is palpable. Noah’s propensity to take off for days creates a tension both in the family and in the reader that lingers even after his abrupt, unexplained returns. Little sister Claudia’s way-too-early sexualization and impatience to grow up seem to be ignored by nearly everyone. Gideon is almost eight and despite being completely deaf, still doesn’t know how to read or sign properly.
As I said before, this is a dark story, and intuitive readers will be able to sense that bad things are going to happen to this family. Readers beware: things are going to get much, much worse before they get better. It’s an emotional read, and the sense of foreboding will follow you to the end. While I was reading, I kept hoping for a happy ending, but I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. (I should have known, what with the way the characters kept quoting Camus all the time.)
There were several problems I had with the book. Although Chase sounds like a teenager, I never really bought the fact that he was a teenage boy. His relationship with his brother Noah, the way that he related to him and the way that he related to others and expressed his thoughts never quite worked for me, and I couldn’t help but feel like Chase was too much a product of Moskowitz’s own thought process to be completely natural.
While some reviewers have talked about struggling with the characters’ obsession with reading and quoting Camus, I don’t share that opinion. I’m willing to overlook and even buy into an obsession like that because Camus was a gorgeous, melancholic writer, and because teenagers get obsessed about things like that. Is it pretentious? Of course. Are they children playing at being adults? Yes, obviously. That’s part of youth. For me, the Camus-laden paragraphs were a nice touch and added even more beauty and melancholy to the story.
What I struggled with was the fact that none of the characters were ever fully developed. This was more frustrating than usual for me because Moskowitz obviously spent time developing these characters, we still never go deep enough into their minds and lives to better understand them. Many of the actions of the characters didn’t make sense, and this made it harder for me to accept parts of the story, especially when it came to Chase and Noah both sleeping with Melinda (yeah, there’s an ick factor there). Neither one of them seems to have a normal reaction to this, and that really, really bothered me.
Invincible Summer is not a simple beach read, despite what the (somewhat irritating) cover wants to tell you. The novel is actually a complex family drama being marketed as a summer-romance angst-fest, which could actually do it a disservice. Those looking for a fun, sexy read should look elsewhere, because this book is about as depressing as a Camus story. However, it would be silly of me not to recommend picking up a copy of this when it hits shelves on April 19, because it’s a thought-provoking read that is going to sit with me for a long, long time.
Hannah Moskowitz is still in college, and this is her second novel. Setting aside my serious envy about that particular life achievement, there’s no doubt that she’s a talented writer. The story she’s crafted here is a dark, complex, layered look at the slow disintegration of a family and what happens as a result. Full of prose that is at times sparse and very often beautiful, this is a novel that is meant to be read slowly and savored.
Chase is a character who is torn between clinging to his childhood and the nostalgia he holds for the way his family once was while also racing towards adulthood. In this way he eclipses his older brother Noah as the caretaker of the rest of their siblings, and he struggles with trying to be the glue that holds his family together. As Chase grows up over the course of the four summers at the beach house, he realizes that despite his nickname “Everboy,” he cannot remain a child forever.
Moskowitz is at her strongest when exploring the family dynamics of the McGills. It’s clear that Moskowitz is interested in dysfunctional families. Everyone in the family has a problem, and the problem is making them pretty unhappy. The misery of his parents is palpable. Noah’s propensity to take off for days creates a tension both in the family and in the reader that lingers even after his abrupt, unexplained returns. Little sister Claudia’s way-too-early sexualization and impatience to grow up seem to be ignored by nearly everyone. Gideon is almost eight and despite being completely deaf, still doesn’t know how to read or sign properly.
As I said before, this is a dark story, and intuitive readers will be able to sense that bad things are going to happen to this family. Readers beware: things are going to get much, much worse before they get better. It’s an emotional read, and the sense of foreboding will follow you to the end. While I was reading, I kept hoping for a happy ending, but I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. (I should have known, what with the way the characters kept quoting Camus all the time.)
There were several problems I had with the book. Although Chase sounds like a teenager, I never really bought the fact that he was a teenage boy. His relationship with his brother Noah, the way that he related to him and the way that he related to others and expressed his thoughts never quite worked for me, and I couldn’t help but feel like Chase was too much a product of Moskowitz’s own thought process to be completely natural.
While some reviewers have talked about struggling with the characters’ obsession with reading and quoting Camus, I don’t share that opinion. I’m willing to overlook and even buy into an obsession like that because Camus was a gorgeous, melancholic writer, and because teenagers get obsessed about things like that. Is it pretentious? Of course. Are they children playing at being adults? Yes, obviously. That’s part of youth. For me, the Camus-laden paragraphs were a nice touch and added even more beauty and melancholy to the story.
What I struggled with was the fact that none of the characters were ever fully developed. This was more frustrating than usual for me because Moskowitz obviously spent time developing these characters, we still never go deep enough into their minds and lives to better understand them. Many of the actions of the characters didn’t make sense, and this made it harder for me to accept parts of the story, especially when it came to Chase and Noah both sleeping with Melinda (yeah, there’s an ick factor there). Neither one of them seems to have a normal reaction to this, and that really, really bothered me.
Invincible Summer is not a simple beach read, despite what the (somewhat irritating) cover wants to tell you. The novel is actually a complex family drama being marketed as a summer-romance angst-fest, which could actually do it a disservice. Those looking for a fun, sexy read should look elsewhere, because this book is about as depressing as a Camus story. However, it would be silly of me not to recommend picking up a copy of this when it hits shelves on April 19, because it’s a thought-provoking read that is going to sit with me for a long, long time.
inesgueifao's review
3.0
Even though I kind of liked this book, I have to admit I had some major problems with it, starting with both the cover and the title that have NOTHING to do with this story.
Then, most of the characters and the dynamic between them were not healthy at all. The parents were completely absent and demanded their kids to look out for each other. The older one, Noah, ran away everyday without ever getting told off. Chase probably had some kind of mental illness that made him think he was Camus (the whole Camus obsession was just plain ridiculous by the way). Claudia was an overly sexualised child who could do whatever the hell she wanted, including acting like a 20 year old in a 12 year old body. Gideon, poor Gideon who I knew was going to end up that way, was never raised as a deaf person should be.
Should I even try to talk about the pseudo-romance between the 15 and the 12 year old? Or maybe the two brothers having sex with the same girl, talking about it and being compared like it was no big deal? The whole dynamic was wrong, just so so wrong.
Then, most of the characters and the dynamic between them were not healthy at all. The parents were completely absent and demanded their kids to look out for each other. The older one, Noah, ran away everyday without ever getting told off. Chase probably had some kind of mental illness that made him think he was Camus (the whole Camus obsession was just plain ridiculous by the way). Claudia was an overly sexualised child who could do whatever the hell she wanted, including acting like a 20 year old in a 12 year old body. Gideon, poor Gideon who I knew was going to end up that way, was never raised as a deaf person should be.
Should I even try to talk about the pseudo-romance between the 15 and the 12 year old? Or maybe the two brothers having sex with the same girl, talking about it and being compared like it was no big deal? The whole dynamic was wrong, just so so wrong.
shutupnread's review
3.0
Invincible Summer is certainly not one of your typical beach reads. A beach read, according to me, is something you can mindlessly read without getting too involved. This book was a very intense book about an extremely dysfunctional family. It’s not particularly funny but it is very real and raw - something that a beach read should not be.
This book is written from Chase’s perspective over the course of four summers and the summers only where he spent his time on the beach with his family and their neighbors, the Hathaways. The characters Hannah wrote were very dynamic especially in Chase’s family. There was the oldest brother, Noah, who was never really there and no one ever really knew when or if he was coming home or leaving. He would often disappear for days just because and would miss out on important events such as Chase’s birthday even though he was closest to him. Claudia, the younger sister, was also trying to become a woman even when she was, like, 11 years old. When I was 11, I don’t remember trying to get boys and dressing sleazy – I was just trying to hang out with my friends. And then there was the youngest sibling, whom I forgot the name of, who was deaf and everyone had to cope around it by either trying to learn sign language or using another family member (usually Claudia) to translate into sign language for them. To put it shortly, this family was and is dysfunctional. Plus, there was “New Baby” that came and right after that, the parents got divorced. What was up with that? If you were having marital problems, I don’t think that having a baby would be a particularly good idea. It just seems so irresponsible and ridiculous.
The Hathaways were no better but at least there were only three kids and they seemed somewhat easier to deal with. There was Melinda, who ended up sleeping with both Noah and Chase. AND the two boys knew about it. That is just so odd to me. How are you okay with that? It wasn’t as if the boys were sharing her (that’s another thing entirely) – Melinda went out of her way to be with the both of them at separate times and once Noah found out, he shrugged and went on his way. Like what?! I tell you, this family was weird. Bella and Shannon were pretty normal so I have really nothing to say much about either of them.
Even though the characters were so strange, the one thing I can really say for this book was the raw and grittiness of it. There were a lot of topics being discussed that were very serious (again, not at all like a beach read) and there was also a very saddening tragedy that occurred later and you see how the family mends itself.
Honestly, this book really threw me off guard. I was expecting a fluff book with hookups and hot boys. This was not like that at all. There may have been some hot boys but they were drowned out by the seriousness of the book. And while there were certainly a lot of emotions being displayed throughout this book, it was not a book I particularly enjoyed. If I wanted to pick up a gritty novel, I would not have picked up this one. In a way, this was way too intense for my state of mind.
This book is written from Chase’s perspective over the course of four summers and the summers only where he spent his time on the beach with his family and their neighbors, the Hathaways. The characters Hannah wrote were very dynamic especially in Chase’s family. There was the oldest brother, Noah, who was never really there and no one ever really knew when or if he was coming home or leaving. He would often disappear for days just because and would miss out on important events such as Chase’s birthday even though he was closest to him. Claudia, the younger sister, was also trying to become a woman even when she was, like, 11 years old. When I was 11, I don’t remember trying to get boys and dressing sleazy – I was just trying to hang out with my friends. And then there was the youngest sibling, whom I forgot the name of, who was deaf and everyone had to cope around it by either trying to learn sign language or using another family member (usually Claudia) to translate into sign language for them. To put it shortly, this family was and is dysfunctional. Plus, there was “New Baby” that came and right after that, the parents got divorced. What was up with that? If you were having marital problems, I don’t think that having a baby would be a particularly good idea. It just seems so irresponsible and ridiculous.
The Hathaways were no better but at least there were only three kids and they seemed somewhat easier to deal with. There was Melinda, who ended up sleeping with both Noah and Chase. AND the two boys knew about it. That is just so odd to me. How are you okay with that? It wasn’t as if the boys were sharing her (that’s another thing entirely) – Melinda went out of her way to be with the both of them at separate times and once Noah found out, he shrugged and went on his way. Like what?! I tell you, this family was weird. Bella and Shannon were pretty normal so I have really nothing to say much about either of them.
Even though the characters were so strange, the one thing I can really say for this book was the raw and grittiness of it. There were a lot of topics being discussed that were very serious (again, not at all like a beach read) and there was also a very saddening tragedy that occurred later and you see how the family mends itself.
Honestly, this book really threw me off guard. I was expecting a fluff book with hookups and hot boys. This was not like that at all. There may have been some hot boys but they were drowned out by the seriousness of the book. And while there were certainly a lot of emotions being displayed throughout this book, it was not a book I particularly enjoyed. If I wanted to pick up a gritty novel, I would not have picked up this one. In a way, this was way too intense for my state of mind.