June Dreams, July's Promise, & August Magic

Beach Blondes by Katherine Applegate
Published: May 6, 2008 by Simon Pulse
This book was actually originally published in 1995, except at that point was 3 separate books. Instead they reissued the first 3 in the series as a giant omnibus in 2008. It actually works was as a single book since it's really one entire summer. There was a little repetition in the start of each month, but besides that if you didn't know, I think it would be hard to figure out they were supposed to be separate.

I went into these hopping they'd be full all nostalgia, for several reasons. This is they type of book I remember loving to read over the summer in high school. (My favorite was one about 3 brothers, while each book in the series featured one and their relationship.) Plus the author is Katherine Applegate, better known as K.A. Applegate, author of the animorphs books. (So what if I was slightly too old for that series when it was published. My brother wasn't so we had a house full of them, and while I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, may have loved them more than he did.)

Also, since this was written in the 90s, was hoping to really get lost in that time period. And there were moments when I did, like when Summer used a pay phone at the airport or videos herself on a VHS tape. Except all the pop culture references were updated. It mentions Kanye West and Orlando Bloom who weren't big till more than a decade later. Plus it has a character listening to an ipod. Part of me does understand why they updated the references, that way a teen reading it now would get them, but I would have liked it more it the original 90s references had been left.

As for the story, it is a little over the top and unbelievable. After all Summer is an innocent girl who's never had a guy notice her, but she spends the summer in Florida and every guy she meets falls all over her? Not quite believable, but probably a Cinderella type story I would have loved in high school. And while I can't quite say the stories got more believable as it went on, they definitely got more extreme and exciting.

I do actually have the book of the second summer already, so I'll probably wind up reading it. Which means I'd probably want to pick up the spring break book first, aptly title Spring Break. What's funny though is that if I didn't already own a book in the series, I couldn't really see myself finishing it (although it was nice reading it for on one day at the beach on our Florida vacation).

3.5/5

Today I'm linking up with Blonde Undercover Blonde for Book Club Friday!