The Goodbye Summer

March 1, 2019
Instead of starting her senior year, 16-year-old Caroline is planning to run away with her older boyfriend, Jake, at the end of the summer.To help finance their move, Caroline gets a job in the gift shop of the local aquarium, where she meets Georgia, one of the summer camp counselors. Georgia and Caroline are heading in opposite directions--Caroline may be leaving high school before graduation, and Georgia (reluctantly) takes weekly practice SAT tests and has annotated her college guidebook--but they quickly become friends. As their friendship grows and as Caroline's plans with Jake start to solidify, Caroline begins to question what she actually wants--to stay or to go. Van Name's debut is a fun read written in a comfortable, conversational style, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of depth. Set against a default-white suburban neighborhood, the only two options presented for Caroline are leaving with Jake or following her parents' plans of completing school and going to college, and those choices are treated without nuance. Caroline's relationship with Jake is mostly well-presented, but his intentions are unclear, as are her actual feelings about how they spend their time together (she seems to have sex with him more out of expectation than desire). Her relationship with Georgia, by contrast, is sweet and well-developed.A well-intentioned but mediocre book about listening to your instincts. (Fiction. 14-18)

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June 14, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Caroline has a secret. After this summer she and her boyfriend Jake will run away together to start her dream life. They are planning to travel all over the world and have adventures together. She gets a job at the local aquarium gift shop to save up money that will help fund their plans. At the aquarium she meets Georgia, a lighthearted, hardworking girl who is determined to get into the best university after graduation. As she spends more time with Georgia, Caroline realizes the dream life she planned may not really be what she wants after all. Van Name does a good job developing the characters in this novel, but since the book focuses on Caroline's dilemma, there is very little dialogue, resulting in a story that can be repetitive and slow. VERDICT While the book is well written for a debut, the narrow subject matter may be less appealing to some audiences. Recommended for limited purchase.-Davia Schmidt, Queens Public Library, NY

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