Book Review: A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger + Giveaway

A Midsummer's Nightmare
Author: Kody Keplinger
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Released: June 5th 2012
Review Source: Poppy
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée'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.

I must admit that when I picked up this book, I wasn’t very thrilled with the cover of it. Unfortunately, it would probably be one that I wouldn’t pick up naturally off of a book store self. However, I must express that although I wasn’t impressed with the outer appearance, I was impressed with the storyline. The main character, Whitley, is faced with the pains of divorce between her two parents. Just when she thought she was coping with there separation, although secretly, her mother wasn’t, the tables turn and the coveted, private summer vacation with her father, who has moved away, is so not so private anymore.

Whitley isn’t your typical recent high school graduate. Living with her mother, while her older brother, husband, and brand new father himself, leaves Whitley with her inner frustrations of being in a family that isn’t a full circle of the traditional family, Whitley slowly begins to fall apart. She is known for her lively, lifestyle of partying and underage drinking. She doesn’t really have any friends that she’s extremely close to, so she fills her time with activities that are inappropriate for her age. These risky tendencies quickly give her a reputation that hurts.

Throughout the story there’s a rocky love interest that arises that goes beyond a one night stand. Do not expect a lot of character development with the additional major and minor characters. They are simply there to assist with the flow of the story as the reader truly lives through Whitley’s eyes from the beginning to the end. I pushed through the pages to the very end, hoping to see some type of closure for a young girl getting ready to begin life after school. Kody Keplinger does a great job of giving the reader a quick and easy read. Devote a day and you’ll be finished in no time finding out quickly what ends up happening to this young girl, lost in her own messed up world.

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