The Summer After You and Me

by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

[Leah]

When I started reading The Summer of You and Me, I wanted a fabulous summer read. I wanted my socks to be blown off with a delightful summer romance, but I actually didn't like the book as much as I expected or wanted to. For starters, from the beginning I didn't understand Lucy's "thing" with Connor. The novel just dives in to Lucy having feelings for Connor, with no explanation and I think a Prologue would have helped explain that massively. Considering the novel was based around the summer after whatever happened between Lucy and Connor, it would have provided context if we'd seen their incident beforehand.

I also didn't like the foreshadowing Lucy did about cheating - how she wasn't a cheater, would never cheat, etc. it seemed like you just knew where it was going to go and that her boyfriend Andrew was likely to get hurt. I mean, Lucy didn't cheat physically, don't get me wrong, but she did emotionally. Every time she thought about Connor and mentioned Connor while with Andrew was emotionally cheating and I didn't like it.

There were bits I liked, the Jersey setting was awesome, I liked Lucy when she wasn't dithering between boys, the whole clam aspect was amazing, but mostly I was just disappointed. I expected way more.