Review 280: That Summer

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I went into this book thinking it was an easy beach read, but instead found it tackles an important issue as part of the #MeToo movement.

There are two main women characters: Daisy, a married mom with a teenage girl living nearly the typical housewife life; and Diane who was raped as a teenager which affected her life dramatically. Diane’s story is about coming to terms with this. Daisy’s teenage girl, Beatrice had a voice as well, but not much and I felt was lacking in development, it needed more space, or none at all. I also felt like Daisy’s husband Hal needed more character development, as he was more of a caricature in this story, one-sided. Near the end we get a chapter for him, but it would have been a stronger book if his view was expanded. Or was the intention to portray him as this caricature? Which makes me thing of Daisy’s brother, I found his role not fully believable. I don’t want to get into details for spoiler reasons, but this character didn’t ring true to me.

The storyline was not linear and was extremely confusing, as there was back and forth in time, but not presented clearly. So, what I thought was happening simultaneously was not at all.

There was subterfuge on Diane’s part, which was never fully explained why. At first, I thought she was a con-person, or out to blackmail. Why this a major part of the story was, and still is, baffling.

Despite these faults the story I kept reading to find out how it would resolve and honestly, it wasn’t all that satisfying. The book felt like a good draft, but needed work, like the writing was rushed or something hurriedly done with.

I listened to the published audiobook. The narration was decent and kept me going.