One Perfect Summer

by Paige Toon

[Leah]

If you were to ask me who my favourite author ever was, I’d say Sophie Kinsella, but running a ridiculously close second would be Paige Toon. Since Lucy in the Sky, she has captured me as a reader with brilliant writing and even better characters. Not only that, but throughout each book we also hear about the characters from previous books so it’s like one big happy fictional family, and I love that. I pre-ordered One Perfect Summer as soon as I could, but it has taken me a while to read it. Firstly, because once you read the new Paige Toon you have to wait until the year after for a new one, and secondly, like with Sophie Kinsella, I always worry about whether Paige will keep me as entertained with her sixth book as she has with all the rest. And, for the first time in six books, I am actually on the fence about a Paige Toon novel.

One Perfect Summer is told in chunks. There’s Alice at 18, who meets Joe, and falls hopelessly (and that is very much the correct word here) in love with him, and they have this “perfect” summer together (I use quotes because the summer was so very far from perfect, when you look at it objectively), we then skip to Alice months later at Cambridge, where she meets new friends, learns new things, pines over Joe, then seemingly gets over him (sort of, or rather, enough) to fall for Lukas. We then see Alice as she grows up, and I can’t actually tell you about those chunks without ruining the story. But I found it very bitty. I found the skipping to be a blessing in parts (I would NOT have liked to have read Alice during the six months after Joe), but I found it rushed a bit. I think it would have worked better with the same structure Pictures of Lily had, showing Alice’s perfect summer with Joe, then jumping to her at 25/25 with Lukas and then perhaps tell us how she met him by looking back. But, then, One Perfect Summer is too much like Pictures of Lily already, but a different setting (UK rather than Australia) and different characters (obvs). (Not to mention, I loved Lily.)

Alice is also nothing like Toon’s other heroines. I LOVED all of Toon’s other heroines. Adored them. Found them warm, likeable, and totally people I’d be mates with. Not Alice. Alice is a drip. From start to finish, she doesn’t know what she wants. I thought the passion she felt for Joe (and the Lukas) bordered on insanity, and her depression after Joe rivalled that of Bella in New Moon, just without the blank pages. I didn’t understand how Alice could love Joe so much and be so, so crushed after he left that with just a few short pages later, she could find herself attracted to Lukas. I never really saw where the whole Lukas thing was going and I never really warmed to him. He didn’t treat her right, but she didn’t treat him right either. It’s like she settled for him, but tried to convince herself they were soulmates. It just never worked. I just kept hoping that either a) Joe would come back (which too WAY too long) or b) Alice realised she had feelings for flat mate and friend, Jessie. That would have worked for me better, Jessie was a brilliant character.

For once, it took me ages to finish the book. Yes, I am working a lot and that’s taken away my reading time but normally I’ll devour a Toon book in no time at all. It just never clicked with me. And the ending. Oh my word, the ending. I can’t even discuss it without spoiling the book, but what Joe says to Alice, what he infers they can do, and what Alice agrees to, it was wrong. I lost any and all respect for Joe when he suggested what he suggested. Alice’s justifications that Lukas was her husband, too, were really paper-thin. I’m sorry, but it was a tad late in the game to play the “vow” card. No, no, no, no, no. Apparently there’s a sequel out, One Perfect Christmas, which is a short story. I’m going to read that, if only so that it gives a clearer ending than we got. It’s almost as if Toon doesn’t like writing satisfactory endings. It was fine with Johnny Be Good, it left you in suspense and you just KNEW there was more to come, but not with One Perfect Summer. It felt a bit gimmicky and I just wanted my happy ending all wrapped up in a bow. I hope her next novel, The Longest Holiday, gets her back on par. I’m hoping Laura (from Chasing Daisy, yay!) is a better heroines, and it seems the Matthew we meet in this novel could well be the Matthew in The Longest Holiday, and I actually liked him, so let’s see what occurs there. But, for me, One Perfect Summer was disappointing.