The Summer I Wasn't Me
by Jessica Verdi
Pages: 355
Published on April 1st 2014
by Sourcebooks Fire
Genres: Contemporary, LGBT, Romance, Young Adult
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads
Also by this author: My Life After Now, What You Left Behind
Lexi has a secret…
Ever since her mom found out she was in love with a girl, seventeen-year-old Lexi’s afraid that what’s left of her family is going to fall apart for good.
You are on the road to truth. Help is on the way.
The road signs leading to New Horizons summer camp promise a new life for Lexi—she swears she can change. She can learn to like boys. But denying her feelings is harder than she thinks. And when she falls heads over heels for one of her fellow campers, Lexi will have to risk her mother’s approval for the one person who might love her no matter what.
I received this book for free from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review.
This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Oh wow. I don’t even know where to begin with this book. I’m going to try to talk about the book and I’m going to avoid the camp topic as much as possible because I’m afraid my review will be a major rant on that if I talk about it too much.
Like Jessica’s other book, this one features quite a heavy topic. At least it is for a lot of people. Being gay. For me, it’s just who you are and I don’t care about that really. Love is love. But for a lot of religious people, it’s a sin. And I knew some of those people went pretty far when they find out their kid is gay, but I didn’t know it could be this bad. The Summer I Wasn’t Me is about Lexi. She’s gay and her mother can’t quite deal with that. They come from a town that’s all about the bible and God and ‘gay is wrong’ and all that. So she sends her to a camp. A de-gaying camp. The idea alone is enough to make me cringe. But now that I know how far people go in those camps… God I cried my eyes out in this book. It’s really bad and it’s wrong. But I’ll talk about other things now. Like I said, this could easily turn out as a major rant.
Basically this camp is for gays that ‘need to learn how not to be gay’. That’s ridiculous. And it’s all about gender roles. Feminism doesn’t exist there. The man is supposed to be the leader of the household, the woman is there to cook, clean and have kids. And I hated how they used their idea’s against Lexi. And I would have loved to see Mr. Martin, the leader, getting what he deserved in the end. But anyway, the whole idea of that camp is stupid. You can’t change who you are. Like Lady Gaga said, you were born this way baby.
I really like the romance in this book. It’s so sweet and perfect even though I know some people don’t think so. There aren’t enough books like these in the YA world. And I just love Lexi and Carolyn and Matthew. I still want a gay best friend in my life because they are just awesome. And Matthew is not fooled by all the things they say in that camp and I love him for that. Even though he goes through quite a lot in this book. Lexi has her doubts and personal struggles with it all, but I’m glad she doesn’t let them brainwash her. I’m not even going to talk about the camp leader Mr. Martin. He’s an awful man and I hate his guts.
There’s so much I would like to say about the camp, but I’m not going to. Just read this book. It’s intense and it was hard for me to finish and to pull through, but you have to and I love this book. Like My Life After Now, this book sends out a strong message and I love Jessica for doing that. She’s an amazing author and I can’t wait to read her next book.
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