Here is the best thing about The Summer of Skinny Dipping: It was 33% off, and I had $5 in Borders Rewards money, so I ended up spending a whopping $1.12 on the book. I'm glad to report that my bank account will recover. This book also reminded me why it's always better to read books from the library, THEN purchase them. Because if I'd paid full price for this book, I would've been seriously miffed.
This book isn't horribly offensive. It just isn't all that good. It's the story of an overweight 16-year old girl (who just got dumped) whose spends the summer with her perfect, rich cousins at their lake house. She feels inadequate, is generally bummed out, meets a boy, falls in love with him, experiences a huge shift in worldview, and then some dramatic, life-changing stuff goes down. The end!
The biggest problem is the rather trite and conventional plot. Maybe if I had read this when I was 12 I would've bought it, but not anymore. Outsider girl with family issues goes somewhere else for the summer, meets a boy, is changed by boy, overcomes former issues, fin. This book completely falls into my hated category of 'books where girl falling for guy miraculously solves all girl's problems'. Even though this book doesn't tie things up as neatly as others, I get tired of that shtick. I love a good romance as much as the next single twentysomething, but the entirety of one's life does not become miraculously perfect upon the entrance of a single man in want of a wife into one's life, and it's simply absurd to suggest so.
The plot, however, could've been overcome. Almost all of Sarah Dessen's books follow that general trajectory, and while it still bothers me, it doesn't usually interfere with me enjoying the book. Unfortunately, Howells didn't show strong enough writing skills to excuse the plot. None of her descriptions (and there are a lot of descriptions) are particularly interesting, and too often they're cliched. The dialogue isn't anything special, and the pacing has some serious issues. Howells relies too much on foreshadowing to carry the reader through the novel, and she uses that to attempt to create anticipation rather than doing something fun with syntax or paragraphs or chapter lengths. The novel has a very steady, plodding pace, even when leading up to the high points of the story, and that gives the novel a rather flat affect (that is, if novels can have affects).
To top it all off, Howells is way too heavy-handed with her The Great Gatsby allusions. Don't mess with Gatsby if you want to stay on my good side.
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