i read this twice, i cried twice. also and have some tissues on standby unless you are a cold blooded creature.
second chance summer by morgan matson
pages: 468
published by: simon and schuster children’s publishing on 8 may 2012
genres: young adult, contemporary, romance, realistic fiction
rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Taylor Edwards’ family might not be the closest-knit—everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled—but for the most part, they get along just fine. Then Taylor’s dad gets devastating news, and her parents decide that the family will spend one last summer all together at their old lake house in the Pocono Mountains.
Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere. Her former best friend is still around, as is her first boyfriend…and he’s much cuter at seventeen than he was at twelve.
As the summer progresses and the Edwards become more of a family, they’re more aware than ever that they’re battling a ticking clock. Sometimes, though, there is just enough time to get a second chance—with family, with friends, and with love.
i think reading this the second time around made me more critical about the book. i still love it, but now i don’t 100% love Taylor—the main character—like the first time reading this. but i still really like the family relationships in this book, something you don’t really see in a lot of books nowadays (with parents being dead, missing or they just completely don’t exist HAHA).
honestly, i find myself relating to taylor in the sense of the whole ‘running away when things get hard’ thing. except for the fact that i don’t have the guts to actually run away. it’s mostly just having the desire to kind of just leave everything behind.
i get that things are hard with her, especially since her dad has cancer, but some of the things she does are so frustrating to read about.
the family dynamics is honestly one of the best parts of this book. it’s so heartwarming to see them all get together as a family when things started to get more serious for taylor’s dad. and we actually get to see what was happening in the background with taylor’s siblings instead of just focusing on taylor.
the flashbacks to when taylor was twelve—aka the last summer at the lake house—were cute but at the same time also quite unrealistic(?). i just don’t think taylor and henry acted like twelve years olds when it comes to their relationships. i don’t know man. the whole vibe of it seemed like i was reading about teenagers being in love, not kids (lol).
in the book, we mostly see lucy (taylor’s best friend) and taylor’s friendship in the flashbacks and not during the present. i feel that it would be better if we got to know lucy more as her own person (if that makes any sense??) instead of just as ‘the best friend’.
ohmygod, the end of the book was so heartbreaking. i don’t want to spoil anything here but you should definitely read for yourself to find out HAHAHA. one thing i’m not really happy about it how sudden the book ended. it was a nice ending, but not completely satisfactory in my opinion.
anyways, if you want a good summer contemporary read but you don’t feel like reading typical summer romances, this is the book for you. oh and you probably shouldn’t read it if you want a light-hearted book HAHA.
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