I am not going to be doing the “songs I listened to while reading this” for awhile, because I love Christmas, so I am just listening to Christmas music. This is my favorite Christmas station to listen to online, but I might be searching for some new ones and just putting “Favorite Christmas Station” as this section.
I usually don’t read this kind of story. I just have a thing when I read stories about high school kids my age, because I end up feeling as if I am weird for not having the same experiences. Now, I hope to be breaking out of my almost completely fantasy world and delving more into this type of book that is at least supposed to be based in this universe.
Sloane brought Emily out of her comfort zone and was planning an amazing summer for them to share. However, Sloane disappears without a word, and Emily is left with no friends at the beginning of the summer. What makes it worse is that her parents are going into their writing zone again, which means that she won’t even really have a family to come back to as her parents write their new play.
Just as she is planning to resign herself to have a boring summer, she receives a bucket list from Sloane full of things that she must do. At first, she doesn’t think that it will be worth it. However, she soon realizes that she might as well make the best of this summer. While fulfilling one of the things on the list she meets a boy named Frank, who decides that he is going to help her fulfill the things on the list.
I loved this story. This story was not a pity party. Emily may have been sad that Sloane left, but she decided of her own free will to do the list and decided that she was not going to let her summer be completely ruined. She might have had absent parents, but unlike several book characters I often get annoyed with, she didn’t say “My parents never pay attention to me so my life sucks.” Instead, she enjoyed the freedom it provided her, but she did not decide to be irresponsible with that freedom. When the time comes that her brother is feeling neglected, she decides to help him when her parents can’t. Frank also has a less-than-perfect family life, but he doesn’t let it control him. He goes on about his life, enjoying everything that he does, and decides that he is going to learn something new over the summer.
The list was interesting, but it did not seem unreasonable at the same time. Sloane did not say “get blackout drunk”. She gave Emily some wilder things and some regular things to do during her summer, in order to keep her entertained. Overall, she was just helping Emily to break out of her shell even more.
My favorite part of this story was definitely reading about Emily ride the horse. That was something that I have personally always wanted to do, so I was happy to see it on the list.
The only thing was that I just found the ending to be a bit too…simple? I won’t spoil anything, but it just seemed a bit easy for me. I was hoping for something a little more exciting.
Overall Rating: 4/5
