Caroline can’t wait for summer to end so that she and her older boyfriend, Jake, can run away together. She decides to spend her last summer at home saving money working at the local aquarium gift shop–and spending all the rest of her time hanging with Jake.
Then she meets Georgia, a counselor at the aquarium camp. Georgia weaves her way into Caroline’s life and suddenly the summer feels a lot less lonely.
The stronger Georgia and Caroline’s bond grows, the more uneasy Caroline becomes about her plans to leave. When summer comes to a close, she will have to say goodbye to someone… but who is she willing to lose?
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.
The Goodbye Summer is a fun story of friendship and figuring out who you are as you get older.
The book is driven more by characters than by plot, and these inter-character relationships are certainly where the story shines. Caroline and Georgia’s friendship is the focus of the book, and it’s refreshing to see a female friendship that doesn’t need drama or cattiness. I firmly believe we need more of those examples in media, and so I loved seeing them navigate the obstacles of their summer together, rather than fighting with each other as the driving force of the plot. Their friendship was so well-balanced by their personalities and family experiences, and it was a joy to see them grow closer and support each other through the story.
Beyond that, I also really enjoyed seeing Caroline’s relationships with the other characters grow as well. I absolutely loved when her boss Jenny encouraged her despite not knowing what was going on, and providing some older-sister type guidance. It was also good to see Caroline’s relationship with her parents grow and fluctuate throughout the summer. It’s clear that her boyfriend Jake had negatively affected that, and to see her gradually realize she’s still a kid and needs her parent was sweet, and something less frequently explored in YA novels.
With so much of the focus on the characters, however, it was easy to get frustrated with Caroline and how much she put up with from her older boyfriend Jake. It’s clear to the reader from the very start that he’s not good for her and has been detrimental to pretty much every other relationship Caroline has in the book–her parents, her friends at school, and eventually the friends she makes while working in the aquarium. He really didn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities, and so with Caroline being smart and ambitious, it was hard to understand why she stayed with him.
There’s also an important scene between the two of them that didn’t receive as much attention as I felt it should have. Towards the end of the book, Jake tries to convince Caroline to have sex, but she clearly doesn’t want to. She resists, but he continues, and eventually she gives in. Since it’s not their first time together, we clearly see in Caroline’s thoughts how much she doesn’t enjoy it and wishes he had stopped. This scene is never really addressed again beyond Caroline viewing it as “bad sex.” That’s a problem. With the targeted audience as teenage girls, it’s important to highlight the nuances of experiences like this. While it wasn’t technically rape, Jake clearly knowing Caroline didn’t want to sleep with him and pushing her to anyway is way beyond bad sex. I really wish Caroline had mentioned it to Georgia, and they could have had a real, honest discussion about experiences like this, because unfortunately they’re not all that uncommon. This could have been a great opportunity to show teenage girls that just because your partner wants to have sex doesn’t mean you’re obligated to comply, and also reveal how talking honestly, both with your partner and trusted people close to you, about sex is healthy and important.
While the focus is more on the characters, there still didn’t seem like a clear character arc for Caroline that provided a semblance of a plot. Often, it felt more like a collection of vignettes from throughout the summer. Which, again, could have worked better if we saw more of Caroline’s growth. Instead, it felt like sometimes she started to grow and rethink her decision to run away with Jake, but then she would backtrack and be firm about how she felt about him. It was a little frustrating as a reader.
This also means that at the end, the climax fell a little flat. When Caroline does finally make the decision to stay at home for her senior year and not join Jake when he leaves, it didn’t feel believable since just the day before she had been 100% set on going. And there wasn’t anything big that actually happened to make Caroline do such a 180—she simply was at the amusement park with friends and suddenly had this realization. While it was a beautifully written scene, it lost much of its power since it felt like it hadn’t been foreshadowed earlier in the book.
That said, The Goodbye Summer does a remarkable job of capturing that “summer in high school” feeling, particularly one when you believe everything is going to change. It reminded me of my summer after 12th grade, when everything somehow felt the same and yet different, as I kept my normal summer routine but also prepared to go to college. While Caroline’s experience is a little different since she’s preparing to drop out and run away with Jake, it still has that bittersweet feeling that I think many people are familiar with. The writing style is beautiful, and there were numerous lines that made me say, “Wow. How did she put that into words so perfectly?” While this book was a little disappointing, I do look forward to reading more work by Sarah Van Name and following her growth as a writer.
You can preorder The Goodbye Summer by Sarah Van Name here!
Are you looking forward to The Goodbye Summer? What are your favorite summer reads? Let me know in the comments!
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