Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

From the back cover:

According to Anna’s best friend, Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy every day, there’s a pretty good chance Anna will find her first summer romance. Anna lightheartedly agrees to the game, but there’s something she hasn’t told Frankie – she’s already had her romance, and it was with Frankie’s older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death one year ago.


Favorite Quotes:

“We lie on either side of her and flap our arms and legs as hard as we can, tears streaking down our cheeks, though from laughing or crying we can no longer tell.

‘Do you think he sees them?’ Jayne rolls over and asks after we’ve made three angels above the tide.

‘If he does,’ Frankie says, ‘he’s probably wondering why the women in this family are so certifiably nuts.’ “ (page 96)

This is a fantastic quote and an even better part of the book. I can’t elaborate too much, but it did choke me up when I was reading.


My Thoughts:

Wow.

I picked this book up thinking it was going to be just fun, easy summer reading, but it turned out to be a truly touching story. Everyone in the novel is grieving in their own way, but all for the same reason: the tragic death of a young friend, brother, and son. The book really looks at how people grieve differently and how it is very much a long process that takes a while to work through.

Anna and Frankie’s relationship is strained throughout the whole novel, but, for the most part, we really only see Anna’s side of the story. Her hurt and disappointment over losing a best friend and a secret boyfriend. Ockler does a great job of getting the reader inside Anna’s brain and of getting you to understand what’s she’s feeling.

I think that this book makes you stop and think about how precious life is and how much we need each other to get through it.


Ockler, Sarah. Twenty Boy Summer. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009.