Name: laura's review of When Summer Ends by Jessica Pennington
Item: When Summer Ends
Rating: 4
Author: laura

Jessica Pennington

Three months Two changed fates One chance to fall in love Aiden Emerson is an all-star pitcher and the all-around golden boy of Riverton. Or at least he was, before he quit the team the last day of junior year without any explanation. How could he tell people he’s losing his vision at seventeen? Straight-laced Olivia thought she had life all figured out. But when her dream internship falls apart, her estranged mother comes back into her life, and her longtime boyfriend ghosts her right before summer break, she starts to think fate has a weird sense of humor. Each struggling to find a new direction, Aiden and Olivia decide to live summer by chance, letting coin flips, card pulls, and rock, paper, scissors make all the hard decisions. Every fleeting adventure and stolen kiss is as fragile as a coin flip in this heartfelt journey to love and self-discovery from the author of Love Songs & Other Lies. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Novel

When Summer Ends

Lani 

laura

* I got this book for review for my honest thoughts* 
I really enjoyed this book.I liked how Jessica books focused on different forms of art and I loved how this book focused on art and also finding new passions in life and also focused on kids dealing with so many changes in their life. I really loved the duel POV in this novel and was equally invested in both storylines. I also really liked the romance as well. I really had a hard time putting this book done and really enjoyed it. This book was such a fun read and can't wait to read more by this author in the future.

Megan Leprich

Thank you so much to Macmillan-Tor and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. 

I tried really really hard to like this book. It sounded like the perfect summer read with some parental problems and health problems thrown in to the mix. But it honestly fell short for me. I couldn’t get into the story and honestly questioned a couple of times why I was still reading it. 

Olivia’s mom has never really been in the picture so she’s lived with her Aunt since she was young. Her boyfriend’s family has always filled that void for her until they break up and she finds out she doesn’t get to work at the job she’s been waiting for all year. After getting a different job at the River Depot she finds out her ex-boyfriend’s best friend Aiden also works there. Aiden has just quit the baseball team due to his ailing eye sight and is at a loss since baseball has been in his life forever. Once the two of them start working together they realize how much they enjoy spending time together but what will happen when summer ends? 

I understood the whole plot and storyline of this book but I still didn’t enjoy it that much. It felt like every time there was a problem in the book it was immediately solved and then you moved onto another problem, which was immediately solved as well. There was no drama to it and honestly at times I forgot what this whole book was about because it felt like it was a lot longer than it needed to be. 

I also wasn’t a fan of any of the characters. It seemed like the two main characters came together only because one was hurting from a breakup and the other was freaking out about their health. I wish I could have enjoyed this book but it just wasn’t doing it for me.

Aubrey Erskine

Find the full review on my blog: http://theshelflifechronicles.home.bl...


  "I'll let fate decide - one coin flip at a time"


This was such a cute read that will be perfect for anyone looking for that summer read! It's a story about how life may not go just the way you thought/planned for, but how fate might have something even better in store. Both of the main characters experience significant changes in their lives and the story really showed them figuring out who they were through these changes. The main characters were really relatable and had a ton of character growth throughout the book.

➽ Olivia - Olivia has everything she's ever wanted: she's dating her best friend that she's been crushing on for years, scored an amazing internship for the summer, and lives with her fun aunt. Sounds like the perfect life right? Well things take a turn pretty quickly when her aunt announces her new job in Arizona. Suddenly Olivia's life isn't going as she had planned. Her boyfriends breaks up with her after she announces the move and then takes off for the summer without a word. To top it all off the dream internship she had scored is no more and she will now be working at the River Depot and Olivia isn't really the outdoorsy or go with the flow type. She'll be changing up her planning ways by letting fate take the wheel from now since nothing she plans goes right anyways. On the plus side she'll have yummy Aiden Emerson to look at all summer.

➽ Aiden - The all-star pitcher of the Varsity baseball team and golden boy of the town who is going to take the team to playoffs. Until he doesn't by losing the last regular game of the season by getting clocked in the face with a line drive. Then he suddenly quits the team and pisses all his "friends" off. Aiden is struggling to come to terms with the facts that he's losing his vision in one eye and is trying to discover who he is without baseball. Luckily he has the summer to try and figure it out. It's too bad that his catcher's girlfriend will be working with him all summer too.

Belle Ellrich

*I WAS PROVIDED AN e-ARC IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT MY OPINION*

Now, I know y'all know just how much I adore Jess's debut Love Songs and Other Lies. Jess has a writing style that traps you once you start reading with it—it's light, airy while still keeping some things serious, and fun.

This book had me on the edge of my seat. After every page I turned, I was eager to see what came next. 

When Summer Ends, while not being directly related to LSAOL, is centered in the same town. It has that summer vibe (obv.), and it's absolutely perfect for people who are—like me—currently despising winter.

Our female main character—Olivia—has a too safe life. What I mean by that, is that she is living every day by the book. She stays within boundaries, and she doesn't actively voice what she thinks; this is especially true around her boyfriend Zander. Their dates are the normal "let's go to the movies" ordeal, but she doesn't even get to choose what she wants to see. And when Zander goes fishing, he never asks or offers her to come.

Now, faced with the threat of moving halfway across the country with her aunt, Olivia is left single and hurt. However, this changes when her friend tells her to live her summer through chance—a simple coin-flip to decide on whether or not to do something.

"Lake Lights—That magazine is dead to me. I gathered all of our old copies and burned them in the fire pit when I got back from what was supposed to be my orientation. How's that for excitement, Emma?"

Olivia has an almost sarcastic side to her that I love and relate to. Especially in this quote, I love how petty she got. She's got the personality of a real-life teenager, and I appreciate that a lot.

Aiden, our male main character, is giving up. He's giving up baseball, and he's giving in to working at his family's business—the Riverton Depot. This all is due to his suffering vision; though, he is technically not blind. From what we know about him, he's never had a serious girlfriend, and he's very into art.

This novel was fast-paced, alluring, and romantic all in one. However, I did have a few minor problems with it. I was left with a few unanswered questions that I felt were necessary to be answered during the book. It almost felt like—though we had two main characters—the story was more centered around Olivia.

For one, I want to know whatever happened with what Aiden was to do with his art? It was made apparent more than once in the book that he was serious about his new hobby, yet it was never actually fulfilled or talked about much after the falling action.

Other than that, I absolutely loved this book. The characters developed better than expected, the plot was a little crooked at the end, but ultimately straightened out, and the story itself was enjoyable. For that, I rate it 4 stars.

If you were iffy about this book before, I'd still highly suggest you give it a try. Jessica Pennington has the whole contemporary romance genre on a leash, and I look forward to what she's bringing out next.

Lani &
When Summer Ends by Jessica Pennington

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