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Review: This One Summer

This One SummerThis One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The last words on the second-last page of the book:
Maybe I will have massive boobs.

Me: Lol what if this is the last sentence and it’s about boobs.
Me: *flips the page*
Boobs would be cool.

The absolute madlads did it. They made the last *two* sentences about boobs.

Anyway, hi, hello, welcome to this review, lol. I haven’t written a review in a hot minute because of school, but I read this for school and have some things I wanna say so here I am!!!

This One Summer is… about… one summer. A super duper regular-on-all-accounts summer. Like, so insanely regular that that’s what I thought the point was: to make the most normal contemporary book possible about what being a kid on a beach in summer is like. And I thought it succeeded with flying colours at this. It was even borderline boring at parts, but then I would remember what I was reading and would think, “... actually--yeah, that’s about right,” and continued on.

Then I finished reading (and you read about what that was like in the beginning of the review), and proceeded to read the synopsis on the book flap to see how this book was marketed. Mind you, I only read this because it’s required by my Comics class; I wouldn’t have ever read it otherwise because I’ve only heard mediocre things about it.

Anyway, so I find out that this book seems to be marketed as insanely way more intense than it actually is. Talkin’ about tragedy, and secrets, and heartache… like, no? I mean, like, but--no. Like--nah, no. You know? No. I mean… yeah, no.

It’s just that... there is some stuff that happens in the background, but because I witnessed them through the perspective of indifferent little kids it also made me feel indifferent as a reader. Like, everything else was always so normal and casual that anything potentially “tragic” also felt normal and casual. Far off, away, and ultimately inconsequential. So if you’re hoping for anything intense then you’re going to be insanely bored, lmao.

The main characters are two tween girls, which means that puberty-talk came up a lot, which is a literal staple whenever you’re reading anything about tweens... But which honestly just makes me feel really uncomfortable--but yenno that’s just me. Maybe because I never had these weird conversations with anyone when I was a tween... (Do people actually talk like this at that age???) I always thought that it was weird but maybe I’m the weird one.

This felt soooooo normal that I don’t even know what to think about it, nevermind rate it. Three stars I guess?


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