Review: A Midsummer's Nightmare

A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Publisher: Poppy
Publication Date: June 5th 2012
Pages: 304
Source: Library
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Goodreads

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.

This was another book that I picked up on impulse at the library. When I first heard about it, I thought it sounded so crazy and out there that I just needed it as some point. This is a great read for this very winter-like spring weather I've been living through, and I really enjoyed it.

This book is just... well... crazy. You can probably tell that from the synopsis. There are so many different things that pile on top of Whitley at once her life goes from hopeful to painful in a matter of pages; things just get worse for her. This might sound like it would be a bad thing but all of the crazy is what makes this book so good. I've only read one other book by Kody Keplinger, but between the two books I have read it seems like crazy is her trademark.

I really didn't like the main character, Whitley at first. She is a party girl who loves alcohol and boys and she isn't afraid to be known for it. Part of the book is that she sees the error in her ways and she begins to turn her life around, and once she does I start to like her more than I did in the beginning.

The boy in the book, Nathan, was really awesome. It was defiantly really awkward between Whitley and Nathan for a good part of the book, but he was really cool about it. Nathan was really a great guy and a great friend to Whitley when she needed him, plus he is both nerdy and attractive so he's very crush worthy.

Another character in the book, Bailey, I just loved. Bailey is Nathan's little sister, and she is adorable. She is about 13, and she adores Whitley. Just like a lot of young teens she is terrified about starting out high school the wrong way, and she looks to Whitely for guidance. She's also there for her when Whitely needs help later in the book, Bailey was just what this book needed.

This biggest thing that comes out of this book is that Whitley discovers who she is, and how she can live her life without drinking all the time. She has some major family issues that Whitley has to work out, as well as her future and all the other craziness that she has to endure that summer, and all of this is addressed in the book. I really like how this book handled all of this, and instead of taking the 'easy' route and just ignoring some of the issues that could have easily been ignored, Whitley took the issues head on.

Overall I really liked this book more than I liked The DUFF, it was a great summer read, with some humor and great characters.