Scan barcode
A review by sapphicreads
Night Owls and Summer Skies by Rebecca Sullivan
2.0
This pains me because I wanted to like this but I ended up feeling so disconnected from the story that halfway through I could not give you a single opinion on literally anything that happened. I started asking myself questions about if I liked the plot, the writing and the characters and all I could think was ??? which is a major problem. And this major problem wasn't rectified by the end because even right before I started writing a review I could barely think of any concrete opinion except for ??? so I had to sit on it for a while. And then sit some more. Just so that I could have anything to say.
That should be enough to explain that the writing and the plot were completely disconnected and I don't think it was done very well. The writing was okay and the idea had potential but overall it wasn't executed very well. I had a lot of problems with the dialogue and how childish the characters came off, particularly Walter, and because of that I couldn't really connect with them. I didn't hate them but I also didn't like them so it really became a chore to finish.
I also had problems with the basic premise of this plot. Emma is sent to live with her bigoted mother over the summer, which she is dreading, only for her to find out when she gets there that her mother is shipping her off to camp so she can go on a cruise with her new husband. Emma resents this and is terrified because she had a bad experience in the woods that left her with anxiety and PTSD. Because of this, she starts acting out and doing things to get herself kicked out which are ignored by her camp counselor (her love interest in the end) because she thinks the camp will be good for her. She also doesn't want to turn her in because that's what Emma wants her to do and for some reason she doesn't want to give in to that. Vivian, the camp counselor, does not know that Emma is terrified of camping and the woods so she can't necessarily be at fault here but what I don't understand is why Emma doesn't explain to the camp director that her mother forced her to go against her will, that she has a big fear of camping and wants to call her father WHO DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WAS DROPPED OFF AT CAMP AT THIS POINT.
I know a major theme of this book is camp being a place to find who you are and move past your problems but I can't believe that a camp would hold her prisoner and force her to stay against her will. It was more than her just not wanting to be at camp, she had valid reasons for not wanting to be there and a very easy way of getting out of it. If she would've just opened her mouth and demanded she call her father this would have been immediately fixed. Her father doesn't even find out for several WEEKS that she's even at this camp and that her mother ditched her there. So the fact that the first third of the book is spent on Emma doing whatever she can to get kicked out is illogical to me because they can't force her to be there. If she would have gone to the director, explained what was going on and that she wanted to call her father, this would have been handled in two seconds.
And I just do not understand why this completely illogical premise is the basis for the plot when there are ways to work around that. It was kind of annoying and made me hate Emma in the beginning because everything she did came off as childish and frustrating.
Besides this glaring plot hole, I had another major issue with this story. In the author's note Rebecca Sullivan explained she wanted to write characters that represent you and are at the forefront of the plot without being sidelined or killed off. And I respect that. So why she wrote a story with a character who says "Still gay, Mom. I suppose the correct term would be lesbian but gay sits better with me." I don't really understand. Lesbian is often treated as a dirty word and we so rarely get characters that flat out identify as one so this part of the story really didn't sit right with me. There's nothing wrong with wanting to identify as gay, but this is a fictional character and hearing her say she's a lesbian and claiming that label - especially because she recognizes it fits her - would have been important but instead she acts completely indifferent to it. I know that's a minor thing but it just made me feel kind of icky.
The major issue I had was with Lauren. Let's be real, she fits the predatory lesbian stereotype to a T. That's what she's meant to do. She's a bully, she doesn't respect boundaries, she invades personal space and sexually harasses Emma. And then we find out she did the exact same thing to Vivian last year which makes her a repeat offender. The fact that nothing was done about this is gross and doesn't make sense especially considering Vivian is the daughter of the camp director.
Her behavior is not treated as okay and obviously Lauren is supposed to be the villain of the story but it's so unnecessary it drives me insane. What I don't understand is why the author, who admitted she wanted to write a story with good queer rep, would make the villain a character who falls into a toxic lesbian stereotype that is often portrayed in media and that lesbians have been saying for years is gross and predatory when she wanted to give us good reputation that we could see ourselves in. It's actually kind of infuriating. I know that it's said that Lauren has issues at home but those issues at home do not excuse her behavior and I don't know why therapy wasn't immediately suggested considering everyone knows she has issues at home.
Despite those things mentioned above, everything else about the story is just very meh. There's nothing I particularly liked about anything that happened. That mostly stems from how disconnected from everything I was but the reason I was so disconnected from this is because of how it was written.
I don't necessarily want to deter people from reading this because I think there's a lot of people who could enjoy this. It just was not for me and that sucks because I really wanted it to be.
*arc provided to me through netgalley in exchange for an honest review
That should be enough to explain that the writing and the plot were completely disconnected and I don't think it was done very well. The writing was okay and the idea had potential but overall it wasn't executed very well. I had a lot of problems with the dialogue and how childish the characters came off, particularly Walter, and because of that I couldn't really connect with them. I didn't hate them but I also didn't like them so it really became a chore to finish.
I also had problems with the basic premise of this plot. Emma is sent to live with her bigoted mother over the summer, which she is dreading, only for her to find out when she gets there that her mother is shipping her off to camp so she can go on a cruise with her new husband. Emma resents this and is terrified because she had a bad experience in the woods that left her with anxiety and PTSD. Because of this, she starts acting out and doing things to get herself kicked out which are ignored by her camp counselor (her love interest in the end) because she thinks the camp will be good for her. She also doesn't want to turn her in because that's what Emma wants her to do and for some reason she doesn't want to give in to that. Vivian, the camp counselor, does not know that Emma is terrified of camping and the woods so she can't necessarily be at fault here but what I don't understand is why Emma doesn't explain to the camp director that her mother forced her to go against her will, that she has a big fear of camping and wants to call her father WHO DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WAS DROPPED OFF AT CAMP AT THIS POINT.
I know a major theme of this book is camp being a place to find who you are and move past your problems but I can't believe that a camp would hold her prisoner and force her to stay against her will. It was more than her just not wanting to be at camp, she had valid reasons for not wanting to be there and a very easy way of getting out of it. If she would've just opened her mouth and demanded she call her father this would have been immediately fixed. Her father doesn't even find out for several WEEKS that she's even at this camp and that her mother ditched her there. So the fact that the first third of the book is spent on Emma doing whatever she can to get kicked out is illogical to me because they can't force her to be there. If she would have gone to the director, explained what was going on and that she wanted to call her father, this would have been handled in two seconds.
And I just do not understand why this completely illogical premise is the basis for the plot when there are ways to work around that. It was kind of annoying and made me hate Emma in the beginning because everything she did came off as childish and frustrating.
Besides this glaring plot hole, I had another major issue with this story. In the author's note Rebecca Sullivan explained she wanted to write characters that represent you and are at the forefront of the plot without being sidelined or killed off. And I respect that. So why she wrote a story with a character who says "Still gay, Mom. I suppose the correct term would be lesbian but gay sits better with me." I don't really understand. Lesbian is often treated as a dirty word and we so rarely get characters that flat out identify as one so this part of the story really didn't sit right with me. There's nothing wrong with wanting to identify as gay, but this is a fictional character and hearing her say she's a lesbian and claiming that label - especially because she recognizes it fits her - would have been important but instead she acts completely indifferent to it. I know that's a minor thing but it just made me feel kind of icky.
The major issue I had was with Lauren. Let's be real, she fits the predatory lesbian stereotype to a T. That's what she's meant to do. She's a bully, she doesn't respect boundaries, she invades personal space and sexually harasses Emma. And then we find out she did the exact same thing to Vivian last year which makes her a repeat offender. The fact that nothing was done about this is gross and doesn't make sense especially considering Vivian is the daughter of the camp director.
Her behavior is not treated as okay and obviously Lauren is supposed to be the villain of the story but it's so unnecessary it drives me insane. What I don't understand is why the author, who admitted she wanted to write a story with good queer rep, would make the villain a character who falls into a toxic lesbian stereotype that is often portrayed in media and that lesbians have been saying for years is gross and predatory when she wanted to give us good reputation that we could see ourselves in. It's actually kind of infuriating. I know that it's said that Lauren has issues at home but those issues at home do not excuse her behavior and I don't know why therapy wasn't immediately suggested considering everyone knows she has issues at home.
Despite those things mentioned above, everything else about the story is just very meh. There's nothing I particularly liked about anything that happened. That mostly stems from how disconnected from everything I was but the reason I was so disconnected from this is because of how it was written.
I don't necessarily want to deter people from reading this because I think there's a lot of people who could enjoy this. It just was not for me and that sucks because I really wanted it to be.
*arc provided to me through netgalley in exchange for an honest review