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A review by jessgrieser
The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin
5.0
Honestly, there wasn't even time for me to put this on "to read" and/or to list progress on it. I was walking through the new children's library when I went to renew my card yesterday, saw that somehow, I missed the release of an actual honest-to-goodness BSC book, and not just one of the re-releases.
So I read it one sitting. Just like I used to. Except, as I pointed out to a friend, this time I did not lock myself in the bathroom the way I used to have to in order to keep out my older brothers while I read. I'm a grownup with a whole apartment to myself nowadays, so I read it sprawled on the couch.
And what is there to say other than that it was fun. I appreciated how true it stayed to the originals--I think it's easy, after so long (and so many ghostwriters!) to lose sight of the characters as they were, and doubly hard to evoke them again in a reader who is now more than three times as old as she was the first time she met them. The only character who struck me as a little off was Claudia, and while she had a fabulous little lesson-learning story arc that was exactly the kind of arc that made this series fun back in the day, she was less compassionately portrayed than I think she often came off in the books.
But as for the other three, it was spot-on. The same sort of sappy sweet friendship and heartache over growing up too slowly, over friendships changing. Even the writing style was exactly the same--as silly as some of the narration strikes me as a writer these days, the explanation of who all the characters are and where they came from and why they are where they are, which got so repetitive after fifty books, felt like putting on a comfortable pair of favorite shoes here.
One thing I noticed and stopped to marvel at was how the lack of technology didn't take a thing away from this story. Of course, if the story were truly set in 2010, the girls would have access to computers, and chat, and probably even their own cellphones for texting and phone calls. Back in 1988, that Claudia had her own phone line was really, REALLY cool. Yet, the amazing thing was that 12 years later, with all that's come in-between, the book didn't feel that it was missing anything for the lack of those gadgets. Makes you think, a bit.
Honestly, this is probably a 4, maybe even 3.5-star book. There definitely were places where the plots fell short or felt a little on the preachy side, and of course, BSC books by their very nature are very "tell"-y. But somehow as I read this, I was transported back to being the second grader reading it in a locked bathroom to escape her big brothers. So I'm giving it an extra star for sheer magic.
So I read it one sitting. Just like I used to. Except, as I pointed out to a friend, this time I did not lock myself in the bathroom the way I used to have to in order to keep out my older brothers while I read. I'm a grownup with a whole apartment to myself nowadays, so I read it sprawled on the couch.
And what is there to say other than that it was fun. I appreciated how true it stayed to the originals--I think it's easy, after so long (and so many ghostwriters!) to lose sight of the characters as they were, and doubly hard to evoke them again in a reader who is now more than three times as old as she was the first time she met them. The only character who struck me as a little off was Claudia, and while she had a fabulous little lesson-learning story arc that was exactly the kind of arc that made this series fun back in the day, she was less compassionately portrayed than I think she often came off in the books.
But as for the other three, it was spot-on. The same sort of sappy sweet friendship and heartache over growing up too slowly, over friendships changing. Even the writing style was exactly the same--as silly as some of the narration strikes me as a writer these days, the explanation of who all the characters are and where they came from and why they are where they are, which got so repetitive after fifty books, felt like putting on a comfortable pair of favorite shoes here.
One thing I noticed and stopped to marvel at was how the lack of technology didn't take a thing away from this story. Of course, if the story were truly set in 2010, the girls would have access to computers, and chat, and probably even their own cellphones for texting and phone calls. Back in 1988, that Claudia had her own phone line was really, REALLY cool. Yet, the amazing thing was that 12 years later, with all that's come in-between, the book didn't feel that it was missing anything for the lack of those gadgets. Makes you think, a bit.
Honestly, this is probably a 4, maybe even 3.5-star book. There definitely were places where the plots fell short or felt a little on the preachy side, and of course, BSC books by their very nature are very "tell"-y. But somehow as I read this, I was transported back to being the second grader reading it in a locked bathroom to escape her big brothers. So I'm giving it an extra star for sheer magic.