| Title: | Perfect Summer | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | Katie Graykowski | |
| Publisher | Self published | |
| Publication Date: | October 2013 | |
| Publisher's Description | High school teacher Summer Ames is trapped in the nightmare morning from hell. Her alarm clock didn’t go off, she accidentally backed over the rosebush her grandfather gave her grandmother right before he accepted defeat against prostate cancer, she’s wearing clothes she picked up off the floor, and when she opens the door to her classroom, the lights from the TV cameras nearly blind her. She's won Teacher of the Year. But unlike the past winners, she doesn't get a new car or a Hawaiian vacation or even new school supplies, she wins an over privileged quarterback with a bright smile and questionable intentions. Clint Grayson is an NFL quarterback in need of a reputation makeover. If he has any hope of landing a hundred million dollar endorsement deal, it will take some pretty impressive PR for the public to forget the photos of his battered and bruised ex-girlfriend. In an attempt to polish his tarnished reputation, Clint agrees to be a high school class mentor. When these two get together all hell breaks loose and they both learn that all is fair in love and football…and winning is just the beginning. |
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| My rating: | ***.5 | |
I really enjoyed this book. Summer’s belief that she was fat and unloveable was sad, but while it stained credulity a bit (why is there such a massive disconnect between characters about whether she’s curvy, fat, or obese?), I found her to be sympathetic and was invested in things working out for her and Clint. I liked that Davis and Lilly’s stories were included here as well. It’s good that this particular evil Texan mother repented, although there were things that went unexplained that I would have liked to see resolved (like, why is Lilly holding out on giving Summer her money?). I enjoyed this book enough to pick up Place Your Betts by the same author immediately after finishing this novel.
This book has a lot of things going for it. First, Maggie is completely believable as a 20 year old protagonist. She’s not impossibly sophisticated, even considering that she is raised by this universe’s answer to Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (so maybe keep it zipped, Tim, mmmkay?). Second, country music is not a genre that is overly represented in fiction in general, and it’s nice that no character in this book is actively trying to be Taylor Swift. Third, this is one of the least trigger-inducing New Adult novels that I have ever read. I appreciated that Maggie has to overcome several real things that don’t involve blunt force trauma or parental death. There’s a lot of hard stuff happening in Maggie’s life, but it feels manageable for her and for an audience of readers to deal with. Fourth, Maggie is kind of a brat. That doesn’t seem like a compliment, but really, it’s all tied into my first point, and it helped me believe that this is a story about a young woman who is growing up and experiencing any number of life-changing events in a brief amount of time. Even when I wanted to shake her and then put her in time out, I believed in the pettiness and immaturity at the heart of her actions and words. Fifth, I love the role that words play in this novel. I mean, duh. Yes, the books that I review here generally feature a lot of words, but for these characters, expression is especially important. They can’t always do it, either through language or music. What is not said is often at least as important as what is said.
