4.5 stars

Taylor just found out her father is sick and that he isn't going to get better. He wants to have one last summer at their lake house that they used to go to every summer before life got hectic. Taylor is dreading returning to the lake house after a disastrous summer five years earlier.

I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. It kind of came out of nowhere and truly surprised me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. I've loved the other books I've read by Morgan Matson. She just has a great ability to write realistic, flawed characters in a way that makes you root for them.

Taylor was a good main character. There were times where she made frustrating decisions, but I ended up connecting with her pretty easily. She can't stand confrontation. When faced with a 'fight or flight' situation, she always chooses flight. It's never calls anxiety in the book, but it seems pretty obvious that that's what it is, in some form. She also gets serious stage fright. While I don't have these problems to the extreme that Taylor does, I felt like I could empathize with her.

I loved the way her family was written. I think that's one of my favorite things about Morgan Matson's books. The parents are present and actually have involvement in their kids' lives. I really liked the arc for Taylor's family as they started out the book kind of distant from one another -- Taylor mentions that she and her siblings have never been close and that she can't remember the last time she told her father that she loved him -- and they grew together into one unit over the course of a summer. There is a part near the end of the book where Taylor's sister curls up with her on a couch and they just comfort each other, something that wouldn't have happened in the beginning of the book.

I liked the side characters as well, especially Lucy. I liked Henry as well, but don't feel like he was as fleshed-out as he could've been. Their romance was cute, but I wanted a little more I guess.

As far as the 'past incident' that Taylor was so mortified to be confronted with...it was a little tame. I kept having to remind myself that this is something that happened when the characters were twelve years old, but still...when it was revealed it felt very anti-climactic.

I liked the setting of this book quite a bit. I grew up in a small town on an island in Alaska, but many of the things in this book reminded me of my own summers growing up there. Small town, just a few local businesses, spending all summer on the water...fireworks and pizza and friends...all gave me a very serious case of nostalgia.

Now, to what I felt was the strongest (and hardest) part of the book to read...Taylor coming to terms with her father's illness and death (I don't feel like this is a spoiler at all. We are told in the synopsis that it is her father's last summer.) Just for the record: I am not a book crier. There have been a few books here and there that have choked me up or even caused a tear or two to fall. The last 100 pages of this book broke me. I counted at least six different points where I was actively crying with this book. I lost my own father six years ago pretty suddenly. I connected so much with every emotion Taylor had. It all felt authentic. Even her actions toward Henry were completely authentic to her character and her past actions.

I am going to be thinking about this book for a long time to come. Now I just need to get my hands on her debut novel and I'll be all caught up on Morgan Matson's books...and eagerly awaiting her next