Rowena’s review of A Midsummer’s Nightmare by Kody Keplinger.
Main Character: Whitley
Love Interest: Nathan
Series: None
Author: Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
Whitley Johnson’s dream summer with her divorce dad has turned into a nightmare. She’s just met his new fiancee and her kids. The fiancee’s son? Whitley’s one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin’ great.
Worse, she totally doesn’t fit in with her dad’s perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn’t even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she’s ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn’t “do” friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn’t her stepbrother…at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.
Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger’s most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.
I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about this book and well, the author as well so she’s been on my radar for a while now. This is actually the first book that I’ve read by this author and there were times when the writing took me by surprise with how true, everything felt. Keplinger’s writing style is really vivid and kind of in-your-face but so completely well done that it was really easy for me to lose myself in Whitley’s world. There were times when I wanted to strangle Whitley because of the way that she chose to deal with her problems but that just made everything so much more, real because I know plenty of teenagers that deal with their problems in the exact same way that Whitley did. This is a nod to Keplinger’s ability to write a protagonist that could get on my nerves so hot dang much and still make me like her.
You see, this book follows Whitley Johnson as she goes to visit her Dad (her parents are divorced) for the summer and finds out that he’s engaged to be married to the mother of a guy that she had a one night stand with. She’s understandably pissed off since her Dad didn’t have the decency to a) tell her he was seeing anyone, let along getting married and b) tell her that he moved. So she’s spending her summer in this in the middle of nowhere town and her Dad is too busy playing Super Dad to his fiancee’s kids that he doesn’t have time to spend any time with her to discuss her future college plans. I think what kept me firmly in the Whitley camp is that what she was feeling (all those feelings of abandonment) was totally spot on because she tried to spend time with her father and she tried talking things through with her brother but nobody was around. Her mother was too busy being pissed off at her father to care about anything Whitley had going on in her life and everyone else in her family had checked out on her.
I really enjoyed getting to know the secondary characters in this story. From Nathan (swoon) to Bailey to Hamilton, they were all wonderful additions to this story and I couldn’t have been happier with their additions to the story. I really enjoyed getting to know both Bailey and Hamilton because they were there for Whitley regardless of anything and I adored the support that they gave Whitley. I really enjoyed getting to know Nathan because he was the freaking bomb. He was everything that Whitley needed in her life and I was so glad that she had him in her corner because he was just everything good and I loved him.
The way that this story came together made me one happy camper. I was right there through it all and enjoyed every minute (even the minutes that I wanted to strangle Whitley). I’m so glad that I picked this book up to read and I’m glad that my book fairy sent it to me (she really is the best). I definitely recommend this book. I enjoyed it a great deal.
..and that’s your scoop!
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Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
