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A review by vanessa177
The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin
3.0
I do not know that I would suggest reading this book first because I don't think it would have captured my attention quite as well when I was a child as the first book did. This would not make a top twenty or thirty list of my favorite books in the series, but it would not make a list of the worst either. I enjoyed reading it. It made me want to dig out the first books in the series and dive in.
There are some things that I liked quite a bit. I always preferred the books that had a lot of stuff about their families, so I liked that this book had a good amount of Mr. Spier, the Thomases, Mimi, and Janine. I think that Mary Ann finding a box of her mother's things doesn't quite fit the timeline of her finding out more things about her mother, but I always liked that plotline, which means it was easy to ignore. I liked that Kristy's sections talked about her father, whose absence I always thought should have been addressed more often. A lot of kids can relate to this.Even though I had some issues with Stacey's sections that I'm going to go into later, I did like that this gave her a very sympathetic introduction. She's the girl that takes the longest for readers to get to know, so readers don't have to wait until late in the series to learn more about her.
Whoever wrote this definitely had a copy of the Complete Guide and some of the first books in the series next to them, but there are things that bug me as a fan. Stacey's plot has the most issues. Her background is one of the more inconsistent ones, but a lot of the things that happen with her friends do not match the other books in the series. I was really disappointed that we didn't get to see the way that she met Claudia that was previously canon. Bonding over their similar shirts is very them.
I had issues with Claudia's too. It is just too weird that Janine and Claudia fighting over a boy would never have come up again in the series. She also didn't seem quite like herself. It might be because she interacted a lot with people that either had very small roles or were not in the books at all. I do really appreciate that the author was sure to include several scenes with Mimi, which is at the top of my list of what I would want from a prequel.
There are some things that I liked quite a bit. I always preferred the books that had a lot of stuff about their families, so I liked that this book had a good amount of Mr. Spier, the Thomases, Mimi, and Janine. I think that Mary Ann finding a box of her mother's things doesn't quite fit the timeline of her finding out more things about her mother, but I always liked that plotline, which means it was easy to ignore. I liked that Kristy's sections talked about her father, whose absence I always thought should have been addressed more often. A lot of kids can relate to this.
Spoiler
I think that they should have mentioned that her father came back and visited her secretly once to give Kristy's hopes a little more context.Whoever wrote this definitely had a copy of the Complete Guide and some of the first books in the series next to them, but there are things that bug me as a fan. Stacey's plot has the most issues. Her background is one of the more inconsistent ones, but a lot of the things that happen with her friends do not match the other books in the series. I was really disappointed that we didn't get to see the way that she met Claudia that was previously canon. Bonding over their similar shirts is very them.
I had issues with Claudia's too. It is just too weird that Janine and Claudia fighting over a boy would never have come up again in the series. She also didn't seem quite like herself. It might be because she interacted a lot with people that either had very small roles or were not in the books at all. I do really appreciate that the author was sure to include several scenes with Mimi, which is at the top of my list of what I would want from a prequel.