Synopsis:
Chelsea isn’t
looking forward to her summer at the lake. It’s the first time her family has
been there since her grandmother died, and she can’t break out of her funk. But
her summer takes a turn for the better when she meets a boy who works in the
bookstore. Josh is cute, sweet, funny…and best of all, seems to like her as much
as she likes him. As the days pass by in a blur of boat rides, picnics, and
stolen kisses, she can’t believe how lucky she is. No one has ever made her feel
so special, or so beautiful.
But Chelsea
knows her days with Josh are numbered. She’ll be heading home at the end of the
summer—and he’ll be staying behind. Will this be Chelsea’s summer of love? Or
will it be the summer of her broken heart?
Review:
Fifteenth
Summer is being
adeptly marketed at the right time, the beginning of May, before the start of
summer, since it is a summer novel. You know those summer novels, being not only
the kind you can take to the beach, or on a flight, or curl into it on a window
seat, but having a limpid, comfortably lazy feeling. A small lakeside town, for
example. A lantern party. A no-rush line for frozen custard.
What some summer
novels—of which Fifteenth
Summer is one—fall into is forgetting that while it is always nice to
relax, it doesn’t mean we’ve lost all ability and desire to feel. Chelsea is in
the backseat of the family car with her sisters Abbie and Hannah, when it
begins, and the sisters are chattering about the boys they remember from last
summer in Bluepointe, Michigan, a pleasant, peaceful spot to get away from Los
Angeles, where they all live, but soon to drop to four, as Hannah is going to
the University of Chicago after the summer is over.
Predictably,
while Abbie and Hannah are excited about the boys they might meet in Bluepointe,
Chelsea is the one who will have that one great summer romance that will change
her, that will help her discover things about herself she never thought
seriously about before, such as being a writer, although it’s also because of
the sadness of Granly, their beloved grandmother, dying, and the difficulty of
spending the summer in Granly’s cottage, where she moved to full-time after
their grandfather died.
All we get for
most of Fifteenth
Summer is a gauzy curtain between us and the story. We can see what
Chelsea and her family are going through, missing Granly so much, and we can see
the Dog Ear bookstore where Chelsea meets Josh, the son of the slightly
irresponsible owner of the store, and we can see the town itself, but the
writing doesn’t let us in. Even the lantern party, which at least sounds
interesting, doesn’t make us feel the awe that should be there when the
partygoers launch their lit lanterns, that feeling of the stars being replaced
with lanterns.
And yet, there
is hope with Elizabeth Lenhard, for whom Michelle Dalton is a pseudonym. It
turns out that Fifteenth
Summer is her second novel under that name. I think her third novel will
be her strongest. She presents bits of promise in the latter half, such as with
blueberry picking at the farm of Chloe and Ken, awful artists who wanted to
create brilliant art, but found themselves saddled with being successful
blueberry farmers. They reluctantly added free-range eggs to their repertoire
and are miserable at that success too. That’s a sign of an author who has a lot
more whimsy in store, nearly making up for the listless feeling given off in the
first half.
Toward the end,
Chelsea meets her favorite author and that’s when Fifteenth
Summer has all been worth it, because Lenhard knows
how strongly writers and budding writers feel about their own favorite authors.
She’s obviously been there. It adds greatly to the appealing nature of Chelsea’s
family, with her supportive parents and equally supportive sisters in their own
way, which is nice to see in YA novels. It can work and it does work
here.
After the Chicks
with Sticks series and Charmed
and Spy
Kids tie-in novels, Lenhard has found her happiness in summertime. I’m
sure she’ll tell another summer story soon enough, and I hope she takes the pure
delight of reading about Chloe and Ken, and Chelsea’s meeting with that author,
and expands it to a novel. Not necessarily those aspects specifically, but just
that delight. I think she can do it.
Reviewed
by: Rory
Rating: 3.5/5
DIAMONDS
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