Release Date: April 19, 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-galley
Source: Publisher
Pages: 288
Buy: Amazon
Description: Goodreads
"Noah’s happier than I’ve seen him in months. So I’d be an awful brother to get in the way of that. It’s not like I have some relationship with Melinda. It was just a kiss. Am I going to ruin Noah’s happiness because of a kiss?"
Across four sun-kissed, drama-drenched summers at his family’s beach house, Chase is falling in love, falling in lust, and trying to keep his life from falling apart. But some girls are addictive....
I wanted to like Invincible Summer more than I did. While I did enjoy Hannah Moskowitz’s second novel, it left me feeling a little unsatisfied.
To start, I wholeheartedly think this book suffers from a misconstrued campaign. Both the cover and the blurb all point toward a light beach read- a story about a boy, his brother, and their love of the same girl. These topics are even hashed out by the author herself on her blog. This is very clearly a story about a family- their struggles, their triumphs, their sorrows. It’s all about the dysfunctional McGills, more specifically Chase “Everboy” McGill, following them through four consecutive summers at their beach house. Every summer is told through Chase’s eyes, culminating in a life-changing experience on his birthday every year.
The entire novel felt very disjointed, never really gelling until it was almost over. The plots hopscotched around too often, not just from summer to summer but even within each summer. The 2nd Summer in particular felt choppy, concentrating large chunks on Chase’s exploding libido and his lust after his brother’s girl Melinda as well as his concern over Gideon’s communication issues, Claudia’s personality experiments, and Noah’s disappearances. These topics never combined in a way that flowed well, and too much time was spent on each topic in turn. Also, much of the conflict and the twists, especially the events at the end of the 3rd Summer, smacked of misery for misery’s sake. Life isn’t always fair, but it was just too much.
