Title: The Summer of Skinny Dipping
Author: Amanda Howells
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire (June 1st 2010)
Genre: Young Adult
Series: Summer #1
Pages: 324
Sometimes I still wake up shivering in the early hours of the morning, drowning in dreams of being out there in the ocean that summer, of looking up at the moon and feeling as invisible and free as a fish. But I'm jumping ahead, and to tell the story right I have to go back to the very beginning. To a place called Indigo Beach. To a boy with pale skin that glowed against the dark waves. To the start of something neither of us could have predicted, and which would mark us forever, making everything that came after and before seem like it belonged to another life. My name is Mia Gordon: I was sixteen years old, and I remember everything.
My $0.02
I bought this book this past summer - of course, I was looking for a good summer read, but thing was, I didn't get to it. I came home from my summer vacation, put it on my bookshelf, and there it stayed until my Fall break where I picked it up and started reading it. It took me a while to finish it (4 days to be exact) but when I finished it, I learned a lot from the underlying theme in this incredible novel - to just be yourself.
In the beginning of this novel, Mia Gordon, our protagonist, and her family are making their way to the Southamptons where they will be staying with their cousins. Mia explains that she and her cousin, Corinne, are super close -
If we weren't texting, we were emailing, and if we weren't emailing, we were calling, with Corinne gossiping about her annoying older sis, Beth, and me snarking on about Mom and Eva.
But when Mia arrives, everything about her cousin had seemed to changed.
Throughout Mia's whole summer, she tries to fit in with her cousins, and their high-class friends. She finds "fitting in" to be stupid and dumb, yet she does it everyday when she's hanging out with her cousins. One night, she climbs out her bedroom window and walks down to the beach, where she meets Simon. Simon is one boy that I would love to meet; he's so carefree and adventurous. If I met him during one of my summer vacations, I think I would have a blast! He tells Mia that she doesn't need to fit it, she's unique by standing out. And every night that she meets him, he's always asking her to go skinny dipping, hence, the title :)
Mia idolizes her aunt and uncle's family as the "perfect family" but as the story comes to an end, she realizes that nothing is what it seems. I enjoyed reading this novel very much because it conveys that you shouldn't take for granted what you already have. Amanda Howells wrote an awesome story line of innocence and change. I am going to pass my book on to my sisters and tell them to read it! If you haven't read it, pick it up soon!
