Phoenix doesn’t trust her parents anymore. Ever since she found the foreclosure notice on her father’s desk, she knows that the only people she can rely on are herself and her little brother Harry. That’s what makes this summer so unbearable. Instead of spending her last summer before senior year at the beach with her friends, Phoenix is going to be in the middle of nowhere Arizona at a family summer camp. Even though she’s trying to look at the silver lining (she won’t run into her cheating ex-boyfriend and working as a counselor will help her to save up for a car) Phoenix is counting down the days before she can get back home and away from her family.
Man, this book seriously packs all the summer feels. Even though our main character is pretty down on it, it makes summer camp seem like the most fun thing. Hiking, river rafting, and rock climbing? Sign me up. For real. Overall, I thought the setting of this book was fantastic though some things didn’t really make sense to me. For example, the campers are supposed to come in and out in 2 or 4 week cycles. But then that’s never mentioned again for the rest of the book. I know that Phoenix and her family are there for the whole summer along with the rest of the camp staff, but shouldn’t there have been a scene or two where new campers are arriving or old campers are leaving? Another thing is that it feels like this book would have made more sense if the characters were a little older, just as far as the summer camp setting goes. Is Ben really just employing teenagers to be camp counselors to adults? It just seems like it would make more sense for the counselors to be in their 20s. But anyway, that’s such a nit-picky thing that it doesn’t matter.
Phoenix was a pretty likable main character. I thought her relationship with Harry was great (I always love the big sister/little brother relationships in YA). Her relationship with her parents was obviously strained and there were times when I really didn’t like how she spoke to them. She doesn’t trust them anymore because they “lied” to her, but that’s not really something that’s majorly explored. The only thing I can figure is that they didn’t tell her that they were having financial trouble. She keeps saying how they haven’t really been parents for the last two years, but what else happened that kept them from acting like parents? Also, at the beginning of the book, Phoenix’s mom gets mad that Phoenix didn’t tell her that she’d been thinking about going to Northwestern. Phoenix protests that it wasn’t a lie, she just didn’t tell her everything. But that’s the entire basis of why Phoenix is mad at her parents in the first place and is why she gets mad at Callum later in the book. So yeah…even though I liked Phoenix, there were several times when she was completely contradictory. Another instance is when she’s telling Harry that once somebody lies to her, they lose her trust forever. But then she turns around and is upset that Callum won’t give her another chance even though she lied to him about the permission slip?
Despite my issues with Phoenix’s character, I still liked her and the book as a whole. Callum was a nice enough love interest and seemed like a real person. I wish we’d gotten to go more in-depth with his character, though. It seems like there was really a lot more there that could have been explored. My favorite character was probably Harry. It was awesome to see him come out of his shell and develop throughout the book.
Overall, I would recommend this book as a fairly light summer read. If you like books set in a summer camp, then this is definitely for you.
Overall Rating: 4
Language: Moderate
Violence: None
Smoking/Drinking: Mild
Sexual Content: Moderate. Two characters talk about sexual history, but nothing explicit is described.
Note: I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: With rainbows in my hair and stories in my head, I am a writer drawn to magic in the everyday world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Xela Culletto loves all genres, but especially loves to geek out to sci-fi and fantasy. She currently lives in Utah with one husband, three miniature chaos lords, and a very lazy Beta fish. She’s an author of young adult books who also teaches secondary English. Add three kids to that and life gets pretty crazy!
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