Manuela Uribe's Reviews > When We Had Summer

** spoiler alert ** Very short book, probably why I thought I would finish it in a day or two. Although I could’ve, it was just to boring to sit down and read for a long period of time like I would usually do. I had to stop every 30 pages to look at my phone or do something because it was too boring. The thing about this is that I know it’s marketed for people my age, but it was just too bland and simple with almost no depth. Which was sad since the book deals with a lot of complex issues. The main theme is death and how a group of friends gets over the passing of one of their best friends, which was basically the group leader. The story rotates between these 3 girls that are left, and each of them have individual issues with their families, as their personal life is falling apart they also have to deal with Carly’s (the friend) death. Themes like divorce, anxiety, puberty, relationships with boys, are all present. And then there was Lainie. Which looking back what did she really do? Honestly. Like Penny was dealing with her parents possible divorce, puberty, her crush with Dex, etc. Daniella was in New York making new friends, living with Carly’s parents, figuring out a relationship with her little cousin, channeling her feelings in her music, getting panic attacks, going to therapy, etc. And Lainie was just mad cause she was going to leave Ocean Heights and there was a girl called Sasha that she didn’t like. Jajajajaj it’s actually quite funny. But moving one I want to say that all these things are real issues that happen in real life and have and still are happening to teens around the world, so this could’ve been a really good book to feel that other people were going through the same things as you (even though their fictional characters). But I feel like they didn’t go into enough detail. Like we don’t really see Penny be affected by her parents divorce, which would’ve been a really good plot point for the book. Like it just introduced the parents fighting in one chapter and a couple of chapters later Penny cried and basically got over it in the next chapter. If your wondering why I put 2 stars to this book even though it seems like I hated it so much, its because I feel like this would be a good book for a certain demographic. For 10 years old who are just learning how to read for some reason and don’t have any criteria for a book and want to read whatever. Which is fine I guess, but then you shouldn’t say the book is for ages 12-18 because honestly, little kids could read this and I don’t understand how a 18 would even remotely enjoy this book. Anyways, some positive things were that it was cute sometimes and had a good resolution. I also wanted to see the complete list for the 10th grade bucket list but that’s just a random me thing.