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A review by shhchar
Beach Blondes: A Summer Novel by Katherine Applegate
2.0
This book borders on three stars. :P Beach Blondes is a compound of three books originally written in 1995. It was a fun, cheesy and somewhat dumb summer read. Perfect for hot days when all you're doing is drinking iced tea on the porch.
Beach Blondes follows Summer Smith, (and pretty much every character gets a bit of their POV at least once) a simple girl from Minnesota who has come down to Florida to stay with her aunt and cousin for the summer. On the plane ride a woman reads her future with tarot cards, and Summer is told she'll meet three guys. The dangerous guy, the mysterious guy, and the right guy. Ensues is a wild summer she will never forget.
I definitely felt like a loser at some points, when I realized how little activity I was doing compared to these girls. That's not a good feeling for the reader, so I did take that into account. You should want to be friends with the characters, in a YA summer/romance novel like this. You shouldn't feel less than them. This feeling didn't really bother me though, because I wasn't a fan of any of the characters! They were all annoying, to put it blatantly. Summer (the main protagonist) was okay at first, but in the third book she seemed to have developed into a worse version of herself. Her logic was screwy and the way she acted around guys (Sean & Seth) was pathetic and unadmirable. On a side note and somewhat unrelated one, when your boyfriend calls you pathetic, you do not agree!! (MARQUEZ, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.)
As for the cheesiness, (e.g. Lianne's revenge plot) it didn't really affect the book overall. It was cute at some points, like Seth and Summer's romance. The aspects that really saved the book for me were the climaxes and resolutions. Whenever I started to get annoyed or disgruntled, something would happen and save me from abandoning the 700+ pages. Because it was three books originally, the little surprising points were spaced out perfectly. Katherine Applegate is very good at writing plot twists you never saw coming, but were fairly obvious afterward. They saved the book for me.
I'll probably read the rest of the series, although I recommend it to only the people who don't mind spending several days reading each book. It took me nearly a week to read Beach Blondes, and I can normally finish a 200-300ish page book in two days. If you are willing to take your time, I do think you'll enjoy this book!
Beach Blondes follows Summer Smith, (and pretty much every character gets a bit of their POV at least once) a simple girl from Minnesota who has come down to Florida to stay with her aunt and cousin for the summer. On the plane ride a woman reads her future with tarot cards, and Summer is told she'll meet three guys. The dangerous guy, the mysterious guy, and the right guy. Ensues is a wild summer she will never forget.
I definitely felt like a loser at some points, when I realized how little activity I was doing compared to these girls. That's not a good feeling for the reader, so I did take that into account. You should want to be friends with the characters, in a YA summer/romance novel like this. You shouldn't feel less than them. This feeling didn't really bother me though, because I wasn't a fan of any of the characters! They were all annoying, to put it blatantly. Summer (the main protagonist) was okay at first, but in the third book she seemed to have developed into a worse version of herself. Her logic was screwy and the way she acted around guys (Sean & Seth) was pathetic and unadmirable. On a side note and somewhat unrelated one, when your boyfriend calls you pathetic, you do not agree!! (MARQUEZ, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.)
As for the cheesiness, (e.g. Lianne's revenge plot) it didn't really affect the book overall. It was cute at some points, like Seth and Summer's romance. The aspects that really saved the book for me were the climaxes and resolutions. Whenever I started to get annoyed or disgruntled, something would happen and save me from abandoning the 700+ pages. Because it was three books originally, the little surprising points were spaced out perfectly. Katherine Applegate is very good at writing plot twists you never saw coming, but were fairly obvious afterward. They saved the book for me.
I'll probably read the rest of the series, although I recommend it to only the people who don't mind spending several days reading each book. It took me nearly a week to read Beach Blondes, and I can normally finish a 200-300ish page book in two days. If you are willing to take your time, I do think you'll enjoy this book!