Love, like everything in the universe, cannot be destroyed. But over time it can change.
The hot Texas nights were lonely for Ben before his heart began beating to the rhythm of two words: Tim Wyman. By all appearances, Tim had the perfect body and ideal life, but when a not-so-accidental collision brings them together, Ben discovers that the truth is rarely so simple. If winning Tim’s heart was an impossible quest, keeping it would prove even harder as family, society, and emotion threaten to tear them apart.
Something Like Summer is a love story spanning a decade and beyond as two boys discover what it means to be friends, lovers, and sometimes even enemies.
Here's what I thought:
I made the mistake of finishing this book when I was in the campus library last semester. When I say "mistake" I'm referring to how I was all over the place emotionally after reading the last few pages.
That's not necessarily a bad thing for me when I read a book that has a meaningful story to tell. It was just that I had a class to go to next and I knew it was going to be difficult for me to concentrate since I wanted to think about the story and try and sort through all my feelings. It was one of those times I wish I had somebody to talk to about the book. Instead, I was headed to my calculus class, where I knew I'd have to get super-focused on numbers and calculations! Uggghhhhh!
The plot was not always predictable, and I think that made the storyline that much better. While I was reading it, I felt all kinds of things... sometimes I would laugh out loud, then get really sad, then start cheering, then get really mad, then I'd be sitting on the edge of my chair...
I thought the characters were well written and I had all kinds of feelings about each one of them. At the end of the story I still had some reservations about one of the characters (Tim), but I really like books like this where I don't necessarily like every single person because, as in this case, I think it makes the story have more depth.
This book really sold me on the author's ability to write good characters, good plot with lots of twists and turns, and an ending I was not expecting.
We end up with a HEA ending, but for a while I wasn't sure that's where it was headed. I think Tim, the character I had a hard time liking, loved Ben all along, but something was going on inside him all the way through, some kind of issue about whether he was gay or not.
At the end I wanted to shout at Ben something like, "Please be careful. Give it some time and keep your eyes open." I just felt so protective of Ben. I do think Ben had a good head on his shoulders, so I don't know why I felt so protective.
Endings like this, where any number of things could play out, always make the reading more interesting to me. It's like I have to think more after the last page, so in my head the story stays alive, if that makes sense.
Definitely a book I'm going to reread.
And now there's word from the author's website that Something Like Summer is being made into a movie. Can't wait to see it.
Here's a link to Jessewave where there's an interview with the author about the movie.
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