From the Publisher
"Equally heartbreaking and inspiring, Rachel Bateman's Someone Else's Summer is a journey of love and healing that examines the true meaning of bravery."—Kristina McBride, author of A Million Times Goodnight and One Moment
"Plenty of romantic moments will make starry-eyed readers swoon."—Kirkus Reviews
"[W]ill appeal to fans of contemporary novels in the vein of Jessi Kirby and Morgan Matson."—Booklist
"Someone Else's Summer is the perfect combination of self-discovery, romance, and road-tripping adventure. Grab this one for your beach bag!"—Jessi Kirby, author of Things We Know By Heart
School Library Journal
03/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—Anna's sister Storm tragically dies in a single-person car crash on graduation night. Mourning Storm, Anna retreats to her sister's room and finds a list of unrelated activities to be completed during the summer. Anna and her best friend, boy-next-door Cameron, set out to complete Storm's list. Some tasks are easy, such as skinny-dipping, but others prove more difficult and, ultimately, enlightening, such as sleeping in a college dorm and falling in love. Cameron and Anna's childhood friendship morphs into romance as the summer moves on, leading to a passionate encounter, with many predictable tropes. Cameron, however, holds a secret that threatens to destroy everything. While a bit unbelievable in places, the road trip story is a romantic summer escape. Teens will either not notice the predictability or not care as they become engrossed in Anna's growing acceptance of the tough decisions of adulthood. VERDICT Hard-core romance seekers will enjoy, while others will yearn for more originality. Purchase where romance and road trip novels are popular.—Lisa Ehrle, Falcon Creek Middle School, CO
Kirkus Reviews
2017-02-14
A search for meaning after her sister's sudden death blossoms into a romantic road trip.After her older sister, Storm—the one-of-a-kind, Polaroid-loving, list-obsessed, child-cancer survivor—dies in a car accident the day she graduates from high school, Anna is left in a daze, mindlessly shifting between her lifeguarding job and local parties as she tries to fathom her loss. When she discovers Storm's final summer bucket list, she finds a new sense of purpose: complete every item with boy-next-door and Storm's best friend, Cameron, by her side. As the two white teens road trip to North Carolina and cross off successive items—including getting a tattoo for Anna and crashing a wedding—they quickly realize their feelings for each other run deeper than their shared connection with Storm. While the tale will appeal to teens looking for a budding warm-weather romance, it doesn't succeed on deeper levels. Readers learn little about Anna except that she is beautiful, which strangers unrealistically note at random, and the pacing feels misguided. Paragraphs are dedicated to detailing Anna's best friend's bedroom decorations and verbatim text conversations with her aunt while reducing potentially meaningful car-ride conversations to clichéd summaries: "We laughed and cried, remembering Storm." Plenty of romantic moments will make starry-eyed readers swoon, but what could have been an important story about confronting raw grief after a sibling's death ultimately falls short. (Fiction. 14-18)
