WHEN SUMMER ENDS

At a crossroads before senior year,
Olivia and Aiden find hope and new directions while spending the summer working
together near Lake Michigan.

Bringing the small-town Michigan setting
evocatively to the forefront, Pennington’s (Love
Songs & Other Lies, 2018) sophomore novel captures the pleasures of new
love. Told from dual first-person perspectives, the novel follows Olivia—who is
reeling from her first breakup from serious boyfriend Zander; not getting a
hoped-for writing job; and learning she soon has to move to Arizona—and local
star pitcher Aiden, her co-worker at his family’s vacation boat rental store.
Aiden has recently quit the baseball team (much to the dismay of his school and
community) due to a vision impairment, and he hopes to pursue his passion for
art. Surrounded by the rivers, lake, and sand dunes, this unlikely match
(Zander was Aiden’s catcher) intrepidly explore new possibilities in life and
love together. Aiden’s loss of vision is problematically never medically
explained or fully contextualized and is used more as an inconsistent plot
device rather than rounding out his characterization or offering readers true
representation. Easier to overlook are some loose plot threads left untethered.
All main characters are assumed white.

Despite hitting a few sandbars, fans of summer
love will stay adrift in this outdoorsy romance. (Fiction. 12-18)