Tuesday 29 September 2015

A Summer Like No Other by Elodie Nowodazkij

Title: A Summer Like No Other
Author: Elodie Nowodazkij
My Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
Online Ratings: 3.6 out of 5 Stars
 
*I RECEIVED THIS BOOK IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW*

NO SPOILERS!
 
Summary from Goodreads:
 
She’s his best friend’s little sister. He’s the biggest player of them all.
They shouldn’t be together. But this summer’s just too tempting.
Sixteen-year-old Emilia Moretti’s goal for the summer is simple: forget her brother’s best friend—Nick Grawsky—ever existed. It should be easy: He’s spending his summer in the Hamptons, adding girls in tiny bikinis to his list of broken hearts. Guarantee he won’t be telling them they’re like his little sisters. This summer, Emilia won’t stay awake at night thinking about him. She’ll need flawless ballet movements to have a shot at next year’s showcase, and she’s finally ready to search for her birth parents. But when Nick decides to stay in the city, Emilia’s resolve disappears in a pirouette. Maybe it’s the spin they needed to be together. As long as she doesn’t get stuck believing in happily ever after…
Nick is tired of pretending to be the happy, let’s-have-fun guy. His father wants him to change his career from professional dancer to…lawyer. He needs to put all of his focus on dancing to prove to Daddy Dearest he’s good enough to make it big. And he may have a case of the bluest balls in history courtesy of Emilia. She’s off-limits: The bro code with Roberto even forbids the dirty thoughts he has about her. Besides, he’s not boyfriend material. He only has time for flings, for girls who don’t expect much, for girls he doesn’t want to kiss goodnight. He knows he should resist her, but he’s not sure he wants to…
At least for this summer.
It’s going to be a summer like no other.
 
My Opinion:
 
A Summer Like No Other was definitely the contemporary novella I needed. It was romantic and cute but also had the right amount of mystery and adventure. Although this novella was a nice, quick read, I found myself craving for more. This novella had its flaws but the beautiful, elegant writing and plot mainly masked them.
Since A Summer Like No Other was a novella, I found the relationships in this story to be "rushed". There was no background information into Emilia and Nick's, the main protagonists', relationship. There's a huge difference between just hearing one of the character's mention a special moment that happened years ago and actually going back in time to experience that special moment with the characters. I believe this novella would've been a better if there were flashbacks to Emilia and Nick's past, as we would receive more information as to how they met and what brought them closer to each other.
In my opinion, instead of making this captivating story a novella, it would've been better off been made into a spin-off series, that way the relationship between each character had time to develop and mature.
Despite these few minor issues I had with the novella, there were many positive qualities too.
Firstly, I absolutely adored Emilia Moretti’s determination and strong demeanour. She was headstrong and never gave up on her aspirations. The characters in the novel mainly saw Emilia’s strength and courage but through first person, readers could also see Emilia’s soft, romantic and friendly characteristics shine, which made her a multi-dimensional and a relatable character. Nick Grawsky…the swoon-worthy character, which one could only dream about. Nick was protective of Emilia and always tried to enlighten her day with his crazy but hilarious jokes. He was incredibly helpful and sweet even though he, himself, had so much “baggage”. Another outstanding character was Roberto Moretti who was the typical, overprotective brother. Roberto was, amazingly, quite supportive of Emilia and he always ensured she was never getting herself in danger. Roberto was definitely one of my favourite supporting characters in the novel though, if the novella were slightly longer, I would’ve loved to gotten some insight into his story and how he positively dealt with his sexuality.
The ending was left in a cliff-hanger, which has undeniably left me interested to see how the sequel is developed, and hopefully it is slightly longer than this novella.
Overall, I was quite impressed by the issues that were presented and dealt within this novella. The writing was elegant and really put one into the shoes of the character who was telling the story. I would recommend this novella to any one interested in contemporary novels or just simply someone who is interested in reading a romantic but light, ‘pick-me-up’ story. I would like to thank Elodie Nowodazkij for sending me this novella to read- it unquestionably lightened up my day. 

- Erisha <4 


No comments:

Post a Comment