Second Chance Summer

by Morgan Matson

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

After falling in love with Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, I was eager to get started on Morgan Matson's second novel Second Chance Summer, hoping for a read that was just as good - and got one that was better!

I started the book feeling like I wasn't going to like it much. It just seemed to me that not a lot was happening; Taylor and her family go to the holiday home, and due to her having some problems with the people she used to know in the area, she's not doing much. She's bumping into Henry, her ex-boyfriend, everywhere she goes, and it's awkward. She gets a job at the beach snack bar on her Dad's suggestion to discover her ex-best friend, Lucy, works there too and is pretty much completely ignoring her. And little by little, each day, her Dad gets a little bit worse. But it just doesn't seem like anything is going anywhere. It's still addictive reading, because there's something about Matson's writing that keeps you interested in Taylor's life despite everything seeming a little trivial.

But you come to realise that Matson has a brilliant way of making her novels seem that much more real than other novels by putting in aspects of life - like Taylor's job, like spending time with her family on holiday, like awkwardness with friends from the past - into her stories that are normal, everyday things to us readers. That sounds like it's boring, but it's not, it's easily to relate too, and the characters are so interesting, their personalities and who they are, that their everyday lives are interesting too. And it doesn't stay that way all the way through. It worked brilliantly with the end of Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, and it works just as well in Second Chance Summer.

Then things step up. Things get a little complicated when she's constantly seeing Henry and Lucy, and relationships - even strained, not friendly relationships - are formed. It's great to see her slowly try to fix things, with the flash backs to her holidays at the lake house in the past, seeing how those friendships used to be; the sweet innocence of childhood, compared to the more serious issues faced as a teenager, while your whole world is collapsing.

Unfortunately, there's not a huge amount more I can say about this book - it's more the kind of thing you have to experience yourself. The book takes place over the summer, so it covers four months. Because of the three different people in her life that are affecting her the most this summer - her Dad, Lucy and Henry - and the time the book has to cover, you're always wanting Taylor to have more page time with each of the people than you get. Because the moments you do get are so sweet, beautiful, powerful, moving, you're desperate for more of the those moments. But the book is 468 pages long, so it's asking a little too much of Matson to want it to be even longer.

Second Chance Summer is a terribly sad but absolutely wonderful story, and, along with Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, has placed Matson right up among my favourites.