Loving Summer by Kailin Gow

Title: Loving Summer
Author: Kailin Gow
Publisher: theEDGEbooks.com, in Imprint of Sparklesoup Inc. (May 27, 2012)
Length: 250 pages
Format: ebook


Description from Goodreads:

Summer has always looked forward to spending her summers at her Aunt's beach house with the Donovans. To her, summers at Aunt Sookie's beach house was magical, especially getting to spend time with the Donovans - her best friend Rachel and Rachel's brothers Nathaniel, and Drew. Here at Aunt Sookie's beach house, they can be anyone and anything they dreamed. For Summer, she had always wished to become as pretty as Rachel and for her brothers to think of her as more than Rachel's friend. For Nat and Drew, summers at Aunt Sookie's beach house meant fun and escape, a place where they go to with their mom and sister for the summer, away from city life. They never thought this summer would be different. They never thought things would change as much as they did...and it all began with them falling for and loving Summer.

My Thoughts:

I really like Kailin Gow and until now have only read her supernatural series. The description of this book sucked me in right off the bat. I am a huge sucker for love triangles and it sounded like Loving Summer would provide me with just that. Summer always spent the summers with her Aunt Sookie and her three best friends Nat, Drew, and Rachel. It has been a while, but they are finally getting to spend the summer together once again. Old and new crushes abound but have drastically changed now that everyone is all grown up. This summer won't be all sand and surf because there are secrets hiding that could lead to heartbreak.

Summer has been obsessed/in love with Nat since they were children. Now she is all grown up and hoping he will finally take notice of her. Throughout the book I didn't really see a true connection between these two. He is just an old unrequited crush and other than that I couldn't figure out what was so spectacular about him. Half of the book was just him stringing her along and being wishy washy. As for Drew, I'm on his team. He seems like the best choice for Summer. I can actually see a connection between the two of them. They share common interests and spend time together during the summer. The only problem I have with Drew is his superior insight into his "man ho problem". They just fit together and he seems the most caring and sympathetic...possibly because the story is told from his alternating view point. To make romance matters even more of a tangle is the edition of THIRD boy in the for of Asher, a super hot Hollywood actor. He seems to care about Summer, but he tries to move so fast and seems to fall so hard that something seems off about him. The other characters of note in the book were Rachel and Aunt Sookie. All of the characters talk about how great she is, but I was looking for a more in depth explanation or instances that made her this awesome person that everyone loved. As for Rachel, I really liked what little there was of her. She has the potential to be the most interesting character. Hopefully in the sequel she will have more of a presence. It may seem like I thought the book was horrible, but that isn't the case. It satisfied my need for summer drama and romance tangles to a T. I can overlook all of the tiny pet peeves above, but my main problem is that it too closely resembled my FAVORITE contemporary books ever the Summer series by Jenny Han. In the next book I look for this series to really develope into it's own. This book gets a 3 STAR rating.