Second Chance Summer

This is in no way, shape, form a cohesive review. Not only is it not cohesive, it’s not a review. If anything, it’s me holding this virtual book up to your face and, in my best parrot voice, screeching, “Read it! Read it!” Especially if you’ve been looking for an emotional read as I have. Like me, you might find it here in Morgan Matson’s Second Chance Summer, released this last May. I’d been looking for something not so much John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, something slightly less designed to make me cry. Of course, I haven’t turned a single page of this novel I've unfairly pegged, so, you know, insert foot in mouth.

Again, what was I thinking? Honestly, I spent the last hour of this book crying my eyes out. I had one hell of a stuffy nose, swollen eyes and a throaty hiccup. Everything I’d been hoping to avoid. Every time I glanced back at the book, I was back in tears. I took two walks around the house, came back and tackled up the hard deed of finishing this book – and cried more. While I think some of this response came from somewhere personal, it was so very easy to blend in with Matson’s protag, Taylor. Unlike her two siblings, she falls somewhere on the average side of things like a lot of us. She also took her turn at being unlikable. But what did it for me were the titular second chances.

All around, Taylor and her siblings are having and taking chances they never thought they'd have. Making friends, finding love, finding forgiveness. Simultaneously, their father has one last summer left. No more chances, none. It was so hard reading about their father who, not long ago, was healthy and now at “three months to live.” It was even harder to read it through the voice of someone else, someone who has to figure out how to deal with the After, not just the Before. How she’s going to move forward, and how much it’s going to hurt. It wasn't easy watching, through Taylor, a father shrivel into his disease. It wasn't seeing her seize her second chances while also losing an unfathomably large piece of herself. It wasn't easy, but wholeheartedly bittersweet.

While of course not without its flaws, so many of them, for me, were lost in the emotional journey of second chances and last summers.

- Bitterblue