Hi! Welcome to my stop on the TBR & Beyond tour for Sometime in Summer by Katrina Leno. Thank you to TBR & Beyond for the E-ARC.
/image

About The Book

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publishing date: June 28th, 2022

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Indigo | IndieBound

Synopsis:

From critically acclaimed author Katrina Leno comes a tender love letter to books and summertime, with a touch of magic.

Anna Lucia Bell believes in luck: bad luck. Bad luck made her best friend stop talking to her. Bad luck caused her parents’ divorce. Bad luck is forcing her mother, Miriam, to sell the family’s beloved bookstore. And it is definitely bad luck that Anna seems to be the only person in the world Miriam is unable to recommend a life-changing book.

When Anna finds out that she and her mom are spending two months in a New England seaside town called Rockport, she expects a summer plagued with bad luck too. But Rockport has surprises in store for Anna, including a comet making its first appearance in over twenty years and two new—but familiar—friends.

In what will prove to be the most important summer of her life so far, Anna learns about love, herself, and the magic that an ordinary summer can bring.

Book Review

Rating- 4.5 stars

Characters

I really loved the characters in this book. Anna was a great main character, who was flawed, and had an interest in space. I love it when characters are interested in something I’ve always been interested in, but don’t know much about. Anna’s mom Miriam had a bookstore, and I loved seeing the books that she would recommend for people. Emmy and Beck were also fantastic characters that brought out the best in Anna as a character.  

Plot

Sometime in Summer had a plot that was interesting, and kept me reading to see how the book was going to end. I loved the story, and I couldn’t wait to see where the story would go next. Anna has things in her life that trouble her, and it was interesting to see how she was going to figure out how she was going to go  about solving what she was dealing with. 

Writing 

The writing in this novel was fantastic. I love how Katrina Leno used a style that was familiar to YA readers, and it still packed a punch. Sometime in Summer was filled with both light-hearted scenes. The light tone of the story enhanced these scenes because you could tell that the characters were having fun during these scenes. This novel also looked at some heavier topics, like finding new friends, and misunderstandings that occur when you’re a teenager. These more intense scenes had a dramatic tone, one where you could tell that the characters were learning from their mistakes, and they were growing for the better. The writing in this novel was fantastic, and I want to read more from this author. 

Friendship 

Sometime in Summer was more about friendships than it was about romance. The friendships in this novel were fantastic, and I loved seeing how the characters changed from the start of the book. We follow Anna after a falling out with one of her best friends, and not the spoil the end of the book, but the ending of the book for these two characters was so sweet, and I just loved it. While staying on the east coast with her mother for the summer, Anna meets Beck and Emmy, and the three of them also form a friendship bond. Mistakes were a common thread between the two friendship groups, but the end of the book brought both groups back together, and it was such a sweet ending to the story for me.   

Recommended for /Enjoyment 

I really enjoyed this story. For me, Sometime In Summer was a mixture of of the fun, and light-hearted vibes of summer, while also taking a hard look at the fact that teenagers can make mistakes, and have miscommunications just like adults can. I recommend this book to fans of the YA genre.  

What didn’t work  for me

Pace

The only reason why this was only a 4.5star read for me was the pace. Some the book was slow for me, and I wanted the story to move a bit.  I wanted some parts of the book to be discussed more, and then there are parts of the book that I thought could be discussed a little less. 

About the Author

Katrina Leno was born on the East Coast and currently lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of six critically acclaimed novels: Horrid, You Must Not Miss, Summer of Salt, Everything All at Once, The Lost & Found, and The Half Life of Molly Pierce. Her seventh novel, Sometime in Summer, arrives June 28 2022. She thinks you are just lovely.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Facebook