Review: Someone Else's Summer by Rachel Bateman

Title: Someone Else's Summer
Author: Rachel Bateman
Publication Date: May 9th, 2017
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I liked the premise of Someone Else’s Summer: girl sets off to do her dead sister’s bucket summer list and enlists the help of her sister’s best male friend. At first I thought the premise was simple and straight-forward and I was in the mood for some of that.

But then, things not always turn out how you expect them and the book had more layers than I initially thought. Now I am not a fan of books where they spend all the time reminiscing about a dead character I never met. That was one of my problems with this one too. Like how all the time Anna and Cameron would be: “You know how Storm was!” and I would be: No, I don’t know, move on please. But that’s just the natural progression of grieve, so I let it slide. Even though I just was told that Storm was great and I never got to see why.

Also everyone else, from the parents to the aunt to Anna’s best friend and her friend with benefits, everyone was supposed to be great and awesome. But I just couldn’t tell, none of them well developed enough for me to even glimpse their greatness.

What I really couldn’t let slide, though, was the lack of personality from both Anna and Cameron (and honestly, every character in the book). I felt like everything they ever did was defined by Storm, and I couldn’t really tell who either of them were. They also had strange mood swings that I could attribute to grief to, but that be cutting a lot of slack. For example, they’d be mad at each other in one scene, and then I would wait for the next scene to explain why they were mad but instead it was all “I got over my anger, I’m fine now.” I mean, seriously! Whatever.

However, I did think their road trip was fun. I liked to witness their adventures and felt like overall that part was entertaining enough to make the book worthwhile. And the plot twist by the end gave the story a new depth that made it better. But unfortunately, not much better for me. It had a lot of potential to be great but sadly, I think it fell flat. Though it might be great for some, so give it a try for yourself, it's a quick, light read.