Summer of Yesterday

Author: Gaby Triana

Release Date:  June 17th, 2014

Publisher:  Simon Pulse

Genre(s): YA Contemporary Science Fiction

Pages:  256 pages

*Standalone*

~Spoiler Free~

Summary:

Back to the Future meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High when Haley’s summer vacation takes a turn for the retro in this totally rad romantic fantasy.

Summer officially sucks. Thanks to a stupid seizure she had a few months earlier, Haley’s stuck going on vacation with her dad and his new family to Disney’s Fort Wilderness instead of enjoying the last session of summer camp back home with her friends. Fort Wilderness holds lots of childhood memories for her father, but surely nothing for Haley. But then a new seizure triggers something she’s never before experienced—time travel—and she ends up in River Country, the campground’s long-abandoned water park, during its heyday.

The year? 1982.

And there—with its amusing fashion, “oldies” music, and primitive technology—she runs into familiar faces: teenage Dad and Mom before they’d even met. Somehow, Haley must find her way back to the twenty-first century before her present-day parents anguish over her disappearance, a difficult feat now that she’s met Jason, one of the park’s summer residents and employees, who takes the strangely dressed stowaway under his wing.

Seizures aside, Haley’s used to controlling her life, and she has no idea how to deal with this dilemma. How can she be falling for a boy whose future she can’t share?

Review:

Fluffy, but unexpectedly sweet at the end. ;)

I have mixed feelings about this one.  It wasn’t good, and it wasn’t bad. Plus, I did want to read a light and fluffy book like this one just because it was summer, and I didn't want anything too heavy (HA. HA. HA. Ruin and Rising completely ruined that... >.<).   Also, it was set in Disneyworld!  xD

The biggest issue with this book was that it was too fluffy. Ironic, since I wanted fluffy, and this gave me the fluff- but it drowned me in the fluff. Now by fluff, I don’t mean like sweet fluff, but a mixture of cotton and the shedding of little chickies’ fur: soft, but not particularly delightful like cotton candy. (Sorry that's a weird analogy  >.<, but I can't think of any other way to describe it; the first week of school has short-circuited my brain a bit ;))   Because it was so fluffy (I’ll try to stop using that word xD), there were a lot of inconsistencies and leaps and irrational behavior.  I get the feeling that we were suppose to just go with it (after all, she time travels), but some of her behavior, as well as parts of the plot, just didn’t make sense.   

The beginning of the book sort of led me to believe that the plot  was going to focus on her attempting to bring her parents back together in the past (and on the side trying to find her way back home). I thought this was going to go down one of two ways: her parents get reunited/happily ever after in the future after OR her parents don’t get reunited/she learns an important lesson that affects her in the future.  Now, even though those two plots are cliché, I honestly wouldn’t have minded if the book centered on one or the other; some cliche plots can have a certain charm to them if the author puts the right spin. In fact, I was kinda looking forward to it and was gleefully thinking of all the hi-jinks and misunderstandings that were going to happen.  BUT this book majorly failed to deliver on that and instead focused a lot on her and the boy. ( The boy, who started off promising, had no personality, and therefore shall remain “the boy.”)  The boy this, the boy that, running away with the boy, staying with the boy, etc. It was the usual spiel that comes with insta-love, and the whole book kind of went downhill for a while after that point.  I say kind of because the whole book wasn't that bad.  It did have its moments scattered throughout, particularly the ending (more on that later), and I did like the "summer" feeling I got from the book.

The ending, I thought, partially made up for the book and pulled it up that extra .5.  This is honestly strange for me because the boy and Haley had NO chemistry throughout the entire book; but the ending, which had to do with the boy and Haley, was actually a bit sweet and a little sentimental.  To be honest, I think it had more to do with how the passage was written more than the actual characters themselves.  It was also an ending that I thought was satisfying, despite the rest of the book being eh.

As for the scenery… while the book was pretty detailed in the descriptions of Disneyworld (and summer), it was confusing for me  to see all this lingo thrown out there describing the place. I’ve never been to Disneyworld (and def. not River Country LOL), but I have been to Disneyland and water parks, so I kind meshed together an image of those two things.  I thought I did okay- until I actually googled the place and found it was totally different than what I thought. Oops. (But reading is for the imagination anyways right? ;D ) I did like the descriptions of the styles and slang of the 80s, though.  It kept me in the 80s, if that makes sense. ;)

So, I did say I wanted a fluffy read, but I guess this was just too fluffy for me. LOL

Thanks for reading! :)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5