Review: The Summer I Found You by Jolene Perry

The Summer I Found You by Jolene Perry
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Expected Publication: March 1, 2014

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Jolene Perry's THE SUMMER I FOUND YOU, about a teenage girl trying to cope with her new diagnosis of type one diabetes and a teenage male veteran who is learning how to embrace his new life after losing an arm, who come together by using each other as an escape, only to discover through love and struggle that your life is what you make of it.

I’ll have to start with the fact that the title doesn’t make sense to me. The book took place during the school year, so I’m confused as to how it happened in the Summer.  Unless I was missing chunks of the book, there isn’t a single beach scene, either, so the cover doesn’t make sense to me. This is not entirely uncommon these days. Beautiful covers trump relativity. It is a beautiful cover and I’d be thrilled to have it for my book if I were the author, but I still don’t understand how it pertains to the book.

Confusing title and cover aside, I enjoyed The Summer I Found You. Before I read the book I had seen quite a few people complain about the lack of editing, and I’m happy to say my copy was nice and polished, so I didn’t have to worry about that. I wasn’t blown away by the writing but I didn’t have any problems with it, either.

The budding romance between Kate and Aidan was sweet. I loved their interactions with one another, and I also liked them individually. Though they made a few silly decisions and I wanted to slap them from time to time, I pretty much experience that with all young characters these days. The mistakes they made were realistic  and didn’t seem to be there for the sake of a plot device. I enjoyed watching them grow as individuals.

I think Jolene Perry captured what both characters were going through with honesty, but without making the story too heavy. I appreciated that. When you’re dealing with something as serious as a recently injured veteran, and a girl who was just diagnosed with a life altering disease, it would pretty easy to make it a tearjerker. But not all of these cases need to be tearjerkers, and I was happy to read one that wasn’t.

I think this one will be hit or miss with both the young adult fans and the new adult fans, but I would recommend lovers of both at least give it a shot.