A Midsummer's Nightmare
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4.2 • 22 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorce dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancee and her kids. The fiancee's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.
Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.
Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whitley Johnson has been looking forward to spending the summer after high school graduation hanging out with her divorced father at his condo near the beach, drinking and relaxing. So she is dumbfounded to learn that he has moved to a boring small town and has a new fianc e. Adding insult to injury, Whitley's future stepbrother, Nathan, turns out to be her one-night stand from a graduation party. "Get to know each other. You're family now," advises Whitley's father. "Yeah," she thinks. "Family who've banged each other." Despite Whitley's anger, her bad habits, her feelings of abandonment, and a Facebook group maligning her, she makes close friends over the summer, becomes a role model for her soon-to-be stepsister, and discovers what her father is really like. In her third novel for teens, Keplinger (The DUFF) creates a wonderfully blunt, caustic, and self-possessed heroine in Whitley. While the ending is a bit drawn out, the story's emotional realism, Whitley's transformation (and acid narration), and the romance between her and Nathan make for a fiery and engrossing read. Ages 15 up.
