Title: A Midsummer’s Nightmare
Author: Kody Keplinger
Published: June 5th 2012
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Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.
Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.
Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.
A book
about a young girl trying to fit in his fathers’ new life while having to deal
with her parents’ break up, going to college, moving away from home, partying
non-stop and being in love with a person she’s supposed to stay clear from.
It’s a story of developing a strong backbone and fighting for your rights,
trying to seek attention from your parents, growing up, finding yourself and
dealing with jealousy and cruel curiosity from strangers. Welcome! Come inside
and get to know life from a teenage girl’s point of view.
“While I'm sure this is going to be a fascinating story,' I interrupted. 'I don't care. I'm having a major parental crisis that sort of outshines your little tantrum, and frankly it seems like my dad agrees with you. I have a party to get ready for, can we do this later?”
Characters. Nathan (love that name, by the way, reminds me of Nathan Scott from One Tree
Hill whom I absolutely loved and adored!). I liked that he was the calm one
and I was really happy that the love interest in this book wasn’t the
sarcastic, dangerous type I usually enjoy, but on the contrary, he was
extremely sweet, supporting, funny, handsome and moral. He kept Whitley
together and always tried to make everyone happy. I really liked him. No!
Actually I didn’t like him, I loved him!
Whitley. She was a party girl with big daddy issues. Her Mom just hated his fathers’ guts and it’s
kind of a personal topic for me, because even though my parents are still
together, many of my friends’ parents have broken up after a long period of
time spent together while happily married and when they break up, it affects
their children the most. The fighting is the worst in addition to manipulating
the kids to their side etc. It’s just horrible. Therefore, I felt for Whitley.
However, it was hard reading about a young girl drowning her sorrows with
alcohol and partying until she forgets everything.
Plot. This book wasn’t all about sad though. It was
a lot of fun in addition to the family drama and the sexual tension between Nathan
and Whitley. I enjoyed the bonding and the twists and turns it took for this
novel to not reach the finish line on
a sad note. I think the main thing I liked was probably these two families
coming together as one and saving Whitley from her own destruction. Also, the
chemistry between Nate and Whit was likeable and you can’t help but root for
them. Oh, and it deals with gay issues as well and I think it's important to include this topic in YA and Kody has done a beautiful job with it. Harrisson was a helluva lot fun and became one of my favorite characters.
“I took Russian in high school,” Nathan said, climbing out of the pool. He’d decided to swim laps that afternoon instead of going to the gym.
“Did you?” Harrison asked, grinning at him.
“Yeah.” Nathan grabbed his towel from the little patio table and began dabbing at his face. “But the only thing I remember is, Mozhno li kopirovat vashi domashnie zodaneeye?”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You just asked me where the bathroom is, right?”
“No.” He scoffed, flicking his wet towel at me. “I was beyond that basic stuff. I took two years of it. Give me some credit.”
“Then what does it mean?” I asked.
“It means, ‘Can I copy your homework?'”
Overall, I enjoyed this novel very much. It's definitely a journey all on its own and if you enjoy reading about
teenagers, young love, making friends, dealing with family issues and emotional
rollercoasters, then I advise you to give this book a try.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
I've had this book on my eReader for awhile. Have yet to read this though. I loved The DUFF by Kody and having read this review I think I may just make this my next read. I need something light and fun since I just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (very intense book).
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