One More Summer

One More Summer - Liz Flaherty Good book, but I still hate Grace. There is no way to describe why I hate her without spoiling things, so proceed at your own risk.

Grace has this unbelievable and entirely stupid belief that if she loves people more than she already does, they won't die. She thinks her mother died because she didn't read the final chapter of a book they had been reading together. She thinks if she loved Promise more, she wouldn't have gotten cancer. She thinks that if she keeps quiet, her siblings will continue to allow her presence in their lives. "If I just do this more or better... then that won't happen." It was, to put it mildly, insanely fucking annoying! That is not how the world works and Grace knows it. But she still tries. She tries so hard to be what everyone else wants and needs, to be the "good girl". Let me ask you this. If people told you that if you were good, if you did this, or if you did that, that things would turn out okay... and then things didn't turn out okay, if things were horrible and only got worse and worse... would you continue to be good? Obviously your good behavior doesn't have any effect on cancer or heart disease.

And that denial she's living in doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you see her shitty attitude. If she's so hellbent on being good because she thinks her family won't love her anymore if she isn't, why is she so god damn rude to everyone? I mean, "prickly" doesn't even begin to describe it.

What's weird is that my favorite parts of this story were when Grace actually showed a sense of humor and dry wit that was surprising to hear coming from such a doormat. When her best friend was mopey, Grace didn't baby her but poked fun at her and teased like nothing was wrong. Her sarcastic remarks were delivered perfectly and had just the right tone to them to make them comfortingly familiar instead of harsh and caustic. I loved that Grace. Unfortunately, we don't get a whole lot of that particular Grace. We get more of the Grace that runs away from her problems, thinks that ignoring them will make them go away, or that she can bargain with God over who lives and dies.

So this book gets three stars because even though I hated Grace most of the time, there were moments where she really shined. Dillon was a tortured but charming hero. The entire supporting case was quite amusing, from Jonah to Maxie, Grant and Faith, Promise and Steven... they were all enjoyable (for the most part). The plot meanders a bit and goes off the rails every now and then, but the author pulled it together (for the most part) in the end.

This is probably not a book I'd recommend, simply because I don't want to subject my friends to the disaster known as Grace.