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galaxies 's review for:
Twenty Boy Summer
by Sarah Ockler
Most of my Goodreads friends have loved this book. I thought it was alright but I didn't love it.
The title Twenty Boy Summer gives the impression of a fun summer book, the summary the exact opposite. Once you've read the book the cover makes perfect sense and it is perfect for the story.
In Twenty Boy Summer we follow the story of Anna and her vacation to the beach with her best friend Frankie and Frankie's parents. They have lost their son/brother/friend/boyfriend Matt a few months prior and Frankie's parents thought it was time to go back to the old beach house (where they made their yearly vacation) to get back some sense of normalcy. Frankie makes a plan for her and Anna to meet 20 boys during their vacation. She wants Anna to lose her 'albatross'. What Frankie (and basically no one at all) doesn't know is that Anna had a boyfriend, Frankie's brother Matt.
Due to the summary I went in with different expectations to what the book actually delivered. Twenty Boy Summer was beautifully written and it moved me a bit sometimes but overall it was pretty lackluster.
First of all the good things. The writing was beautiful and there are quite a few quotes that I loved. I also thought that one relationship Anna forms during their trip was really sweet.
While I understand that Anna was very much in love with Matt and missed him terribly, her grief heightened by her not being able to talk with anyone about losing her boyfriend, I sometimes thought that she was too melodramatic. It seemed odd to me to never tell anyone that she and Matt were a couple only because she promised him that he would get to tell Frankie once he was ready to do so. I'd think that his death would erase the promise.
At first I thought Matt was really sweet but the more flashbacks we got from the time Anna and Matt were together, the less I liked him and I started to dislike having to read more about him. Scenes about which I was supposed to think that Matt is a nice guy and that I'm supposed to like him.
Frankie, Anna's best friend and Matt's sister, was the one stereotypical and kind of crazed character that seemed thrown in there solely for drama. I thought her reactions were exaggerated and didn't seem true to life. At first she seemed okay but she got progressively worse, maybe to make Anna appear as the better person, the one who needed consoling the most.
Anna never had the guts to tell Frankie about her and Matt when it was something that I had been anticipating throughout the whole book and when Frankie finally found out my disappointment reached a high. Anna should've been the one to tell Frankie.
Something that really bothered me was Anna's and Frankie's obsession with losing virginity. There is a healthy way to go about it but sadly Twenty Boy Summer didn't portray it.
Twenty Boy Summer is about letting go and moving on. It's not about the value of being honest, which I found disappointing.
The title Twenty Boy Summer gives the impression of a fun summer book, the summary the exact opposite. Once you've read the book the cover makes perfect sense and it is perfect for the story.
In Twenty Boy Summer we follow the story of Anna and her vacation to the beach with her best friend Frankie and Frankie's parents. They have lost their son/brother/friend/boyfriend Matt a few months prior and Frankie's parents thought it was time to go back to the old beach house (where they made their yearly vacation) to get back some sense of normalcy. Frankie makes a plan for her and Anna to meet 20 boys during their vacation. She wants Anna to lose her 'albatross'. What Frankie (and basically no one at all) doesn't know is that Anna had a boyfriend, Frankie's brother Matt.
Due to the summary I went in with different expectations to what the book actually delivered. Twenty Boy Summer was beautifully written and it moved me a bit sometimes but overall it was pretty lackluster.
First of all the good things. The writing was beautiful and there are quite a few quotes that I loved. I also thought that one relationship Anna forms during their trip was really sweet.
While I understand that Anna was very much in love with Matt and missed him terribly, her grief heightened by her not being able to talk with anyone about losing her boyfriend, I sometimes thought that she was too melodramatic. It seemed odd to me to never tell anyone that she and Matt were a couple only because she promised him that he would get to tell Frankie once he was ready to do so. I'd think that his death would erase the promise.
At first I thought Matt was really sweet but the more flashbacks we got from the time Anna and Matt were together, the less I liked him and I started to dislike having to read more about him. Scenes about which I was supposed to think that Matt is a nice guy and that I'm supposed to like him.
Frankie, Anna's best friend and Matt's sister, was the one stereotypical and kind of crazed character that seemed thrown in there solely for drama. I thought her reactions were exaggerated and didn't seem true to life. At first she seemed okay but she got progressively worse, maybe to make Anna appear as the better person, the one who needed consoling the most.
Anna never had the guts to tell Frankie about her and Matt when it was something that I had been anticipating throughout the whole book and when Frankie finally found out my disappointment reached a high. Anna should've been the one to tell Frankie.
Something that really bothered me was Anna's and Frankie's obsession with losing virginity. There is a healthy way to go about it but sadly Twenty Boy Summer didn't portray it.
Twenty Boy Summer is about letting go and moving on. It's not about the value of being honest, which I found disappointing.