Customer Reviews

It's Not Summer Without You

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Its Not Summer Without You was a wonderful, beautiful, riveting book that i can't get out of my head!! I loved the first book and i wasn't disappointed with the second which blew my mind. The only thing that got me down was how sad this book was, i felt bitter and depressed for Belly and the way Conrad was treating her. But then i'd read an especially touching part between Belly and Conrad or Belly and Jeremiah and it lift my spirits again. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who's looking for a new favorite, trust me it'll be a good decision. Now i have no clue how i will survive a whole year waiting for the final book We'll Always Have Summer and a little worried because honestly, the title sounds sad in itself!! Trust me and pick up this book or the first one, you won't regret it!!!

I read the first book and this one back to back over a couple of days. I enjoyed the love story in the first one and knew there would be conflict in this one but was waiting for a more satisfying resolution... I felt that the big scene with Belly and Conrad was just not as powerful as the buildup and had to go back and reread it in order to see if I had missed something. And I hadn't-- so I was disappointed a bit. I am looking forward to the final one but just hope that it is better at tying up the loose ends since this felt more a book about the house than the individuals.

Also just as an aside--- in The Summer I Turned Pretty- when Belly is talking to Cam on the beach she whistles and it says that she's proud of her whistle. Yet in this book when Mr.Fisher shows up at the house and she's trying figure out to warn the boys and considers whistling she (belly) says she doesn't know how to whistle. I know i read these back to back and it's a small detail but it annoyed me. I hate it when authors/editors miss the little details especially related to character building!!
:(

There's been a sea change in the lives of Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah, the inextricable and love-fraught characters of Jenny Han's `It's Not Summer Without You,' the second installment in her `Summer Series'. And yet while some things are forever lost, the connection between them, the desperate, muddled, lusty feelings they carry for one another endure in this deliciously addicting and maddening follow-up to `The Summer I Turned Pretty'. Clear your schedule for three days before cracking the binding on this one, and read no further if you have not read the first book in the series.

While the story opens with a fantasy, an idealized, crystalline moment of what could have been, what follows when Belly is shaken from her revelry is anything but. This is the first summer that she is spending away from the house at Cousin's Beach, away from her lifelong friends and love objects, Conrad and Jeremiah, and everything has fallen to ruins with the death of the boys' mother, Susannah. As it was Susannah's house that they summered at, the axis around which all the characters orbited has dematerialized, and they find themselves flung into the dark and fearsome void. Belly's mother has gone on a zombie-like autopilot after the loss of her best friend, pouring herself into dealing with Susannah's estate and legal matters. Jeremiah, ever the life raft, is dragging along his remaining family as best he can while trying to stay afloat himself. Conrad, however, already a melancholic and volatile figure, has taken hold of his mother's death as an opportunity for a downward spiraling trip to rock bottom.

But more than Susannah's recent death has transpired in the year since we left Belly and Conrad holding hands on the beach at the end of the summer, on the brink of realizing their long hidden feelings. While Belly and Conrad may have taken a stab at a real relationship, Han uses her expertly timed flashbacks to reveal the acute pain of unmet, overbuilt expectations, and the inevitable disappointments of trying to turn a fantasy into a reality. The realism of Han's depiction, however, is chokingly accurate.

The will-they won't-they, `who will she pick?', angsty-teen-romance continues through this edition, but the pervasive theme is that of innocence lost, and the yearning for a simpler past. Belly's nostalgia for the summers of her childhood are contagious, and as the love triangle grows ever more complicated, it's hard not to wonder if everyone would have been better off keeping a lid on their feelings. Sexual pressures begin to enter the picture, as does an unfortunate turn with a bottle of tequila, and all the adults in Belly's life are too busy managing their own emotions to pull her back from the edge. Han perfectly captures the combination of fear, regret, and exhilaration of this age, of the uncertainty that every decision brings, the constant losing of what you thought was true and who you thought you were.

Most prominent is the death of Susannah and all the shock and anguish that goes along with it, which is tenderly wrought and believable. Each character comes to represent a different way of handling grief, and the book seems to end on a message of hanging on, rather than letting go, which was novel.

Giddy-making stuff, that Han carries the tightly wound and absorbing story into a second book with seemingly effortless fineness. There is a quirkiness and a confidence to her style that can't be learned. Not only did this book land her an official spot in our `Collection' of greatest reads for kids, it would be a safe bet to name her as one of the most exciting authors of teen literature to watch in the coming years. As you read the final page of Its Not Summer, get ready to throw the book across the room and howl in desperation for the third and final book in the series, due out in May 2011. Write Jenny Han! Write like the wind!

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I find it very hard to describe why, exactly, I love this series so very much. The story's not that unique, and the plot can drag at times. Nevertheless, I found myself effortlessly lured into Belly's world in this second book in the series. IT'S NOT SUMMER WITHOUT YOU made me laugh, tear up, and swoon, and it is every bit as good as the first book, if not better.

It was impossible for me not to get emotionally invested in these characters. Jenny Han has created marvelously nuanced characters, flawed or troubled or just plain not nice...and yet all endearing. IT'S NOT SUMMER WITHOUT YOU has a gorgeous blend of family/parental tensions, vivid flashbacks, and your plain old-fashioned love triangle done right. The book is dotted with quietly emotional scenes that made me cry or cringe or shout at these characters I love to start treating one another better, darn it. The emotions are agonizing, and thus addicting. You don't want to look away even in the most painful of moments.

Loving this book is an conscious act of devotion. I recognize that these books are not for everyone. Some might find the plot too slow and meandering to be engaging. Others will not feel much sympathy for Belly, who can come off as bland and immature. Those things, of course, did not bother me, for the sheer emotional resonance of this story quite justifiably overcame everything else.

With IT'S NOT SUMMER WITHOUT YOU, Jenny Han cements herself as a supremely talented writer who can avoid the second-in-a-trilogy book slump and make readers fall hard for the characters. Fans of the first book will adore this one, and if you haven't yet read the first, you should definitely do so as soon as possible, preferably on a night when you want to feel emotionally alive.

I will and never will be a big reader. I have tried hard to find that feeling that my reading friends talk about. One of my dear friends begged me to read this book and the other ones in the series, and I feel in love with belly and her two lovers. I took in every moment and I felt everything she did in her moments at Cousins. I have read the series about 3 times now, and every time...I am captured in it :)

Its decent. Its a good book. This book is really sad. The first one was good. But the second was sad. I was impressed with the writing style and stuff. But other than that. Its a good book. The ending is really touching. And I love how it has a climatic ending that makes you want to race to get to the third book. This book has one of the best endings that makes you want to read the last book.

5 out of 5 stars!!! I loved this continuation of Belly's story! Especially with getting to read some of Jeremiah's point-of-view! With the way the author left the book I think there will be another one, I hope, and I can't wait to see what that "a couple years later" part was about and who with!! Maybe we'll even get to read a bit from Conrad since he is one very moody character I'm curious as to what he's really thinking about. In truth ... I like both brothers and I can't make up my mind as to which one I want Belly to be with. In some ways I wish she could just have them both ... but I know it's not that kind of story either. LOL. This was a great story about the meaning of friendship, how sometimes that friendship can evolve into something more, what brothers or even best friends will do for one another, losing a person who meant quite a bit to you, and the power of teenage romance -- what's true about it and what we just want to see in rose colored glasses.

Review By: From Me to You ... Book Reviews
(read more of this review and two teasers on my blog)

Also reviewed for my blog, The Vintage Bookworm. [...]
Wow. That's all I can say right now about this book. I loved it. The beginning made me really happy and then something got thrown out at me and I literally dropped the book. I couldn't believe it. It made me terribly sad. I'm not going to go into detail because I don't want to spoil anything, but oh my God. My heart really broke when I read that first line about it.

This book was a lot different than the first. Which took some time to getting used to. It was amazing though. Before picking this book up, I was saving it. I was saving it to read and then read the third and final book right after it. But after picking up several books and failing to read them during my Read-a-Thon, I knew I had to pick this up. Even though the books I had started and put down were books I was looking forward to reading. And it's not the books, it's just the complete rut I was in. I wanted to read, but just...couldn't. But wow, this really yanked me out of it!

Belly has done a lot of growing up. A LOT. And so had Conrad, Jeremiah, and even Steven. How can you not with what happened? My heart goes out to them. There were a couple of small chapters in this book that was in Jeremiah's point-of-view, which I loved. I was glad to get into his head and wonder what was going on inside there.

Overall, I can't say much more about this. I love this series. It's very well written and beautiful. If you haven't read it yet, do it soon. You won't be sorry.

Cousins Beach...it is the Alpha and the Omega and to Belly it is nothing without Conrad and Jeremiah. Every summer they spend together in Susannah's beach house. How can they all be together now that Susannah is gone?

This is the story of love...every form of it. The romantic kind, the brotherly kind, the platonic kind and the unconditional kind. These families whose lives have been continually joined at the hip have lost the thing that holds them together. Friendship. A best friend has been lost. How do you recover from that? How do you deal with the loss of your mother? Your best friend? Your first love?

Together.

I loved "The summer I turned pretty" and I love love love "It's not summer without you" Belly is a girl I understand. Unsure about most things but so totally sure about her heart. This story is personal and it transports you back to your first major crush and that feeling when he finally touched you...back to summer vacations that you remember like yesterday...back to seemingly endless summer nights and hot days filled with the smell of saltwater and suntan lotion...back to hope!

I am invested in these characters and I really hope there is more to come...Belly, Jeremiah and Conrad are not done yet.

"I don't want to make the same mistakes my parents made. I didn't want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever." - Belly

Well, I ordered this book but was looking for a different book. But, overall, the book got there within the estimated selling date and it was in the described condition. So, overall, it lived up to the book's expectations.