Can a book fall short of your expectations but also completely satisfy? I think I have a tendency to love or loathe books (and I don’t read a lot of books I loathe, so mostly, I collect books I love), but I think there is a lot more gray than I’d often like to admit.

I loved Morgan Matson’s first book, Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour, so her second book, Second Chance Summer, has been on my radar for months. When a shiny hardback crossed my path, I practically salivated.

I did enjoy this story – a summer in the life of a girl returning to her lake house with her family after a long hiatus. She left behind some messy romance and friendship situations, and of course they all are waiting for her when she returns – everyone has grown up a bit but nobody has forgotten Taylor’s crimes. Her family is a fun bunch of characters; moody but shy ballerina sister, nerdy fact-spouting brother, a stray dog that is adopted into the fold reluctantly. A romance.

Definitely a book for summer, atmospheric for sure, but not quite atmospheric enough to hide some overexplaining, some undeveloped character traits, some shaky plot bits. I felt like Taylor was trying too hard to be elusive and troubled, creating drama for herself where it would be easier just not to stress. All of her misdeeds occurred at age twelve – at fifteen, all the affected parties acted as if they had been stewing over terrible betrayals for the entire three years of Taylor’s absence. And Taylor’s love interest – literally, the boy next door – has an annoying habit of magically appearing – poof! – every other paragraph or so, popping out from behind counters, lurking in the woods with benign intent… Matson plays off Henry’s Houdini-act as a metaphor at some point along the way, but it was just WAY too convenient to escape my notice.

But despite any surface misgivings, I found this book to slowly move me. Emotionally penetrating. As I read, I found myself shutting the book and putting it aside, reading anything else instead – not because I couldn’t bear to see Henry pull up to the dock with his rowboat at yet another well-timed interval – but because I knew this book was going to hit me hard, at any second. The reason Taylor and her family have returned to the lake house is because her father has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He has three months to live, and he wants to spend it with his family at his favorite place in the world.

I wept. I wept on the bus, without apology. When it was my stop, I folded a page, walked to my apartment and picked up where I left off, and read on, while continually crying.

Maybe I’m letting my emotions sway my opinion here, but as the tragedy unrolled, I began to forgive the sloppy bits. Wouldn’t I be sloppy and underdeveloped and quick to see meaning where there is none if I were Taylor? If I was Taylor’s mother? If I were dying? Maybe the tragedy highlights Matson’s strengths here – her characters are not flawless, not aware of their motives. They are grieving ahead of time, and Matson captures the pain, the earnestness, the guilt, and, most importantly, the care and love they have for each other.

What I wanted was something flawless. What I got was something pretty but with messy edges, something that was hard to read, and tears on the bus.

After hearing about Beth Anne Bauman’s Jersey Angel described as unusually sexy, maybe even TOO salacious for YA? I’m interested. I like to read controversial books, and even though the controversy surrounding the relative “sexiness” seems to have been limited to a few weeks of pre-pub buzz that has long since fizzled out, a quick look at the online reviews for this title on Goodreads or online reveals some VERY upset readers. But they aren’t upset in the way I expected, which isn’t suprising, since I did not find Jersey Angel to be the book I expected either.

Angel is sixteen, a year-round beach dweller. Her mother makes a living renting her two beach houses to tourists, Angel works at her dad’s gas station for pocket change, but that’s not the best part of Angel’s life. Angel lives for the summer, for kicking back with her best friend Inggy, for late night parties on the sand and boat rides and boys. Of course, boys. This is a slice-of-Angel’s-life, and her life, like the plot, is unfocused. Her relationships – friendships or family, sexual or not – drive the story.  Angel is relaxed – no worries about grades, college, life choices, the other things that female YA protagonists are usually stressing over – and tension emerges when the reader starts to wonder if her laid-back attitude might end up coming back around to punish her.

The sex? It is there, but in small doses and with most of the action happening off stage; with all the buzz, I expected a lot more to blush about. The sex that makes it to the page is detailed in a romantic manner, full of moody details of the sand, the water, etc, but Bauman’s descriptions are not starry-eyed. I think in YA, the reader expects sex to be the result of a lot of build up between two particular characters, maybe a first-time incident for one or both parties, and then – Hollywood style – the romance of their relationship and the setting and their LOVE just sweeps away any need for details. This is not the case for Angel. The descriptions here speak of a character who knows what she is doing with her sexuality, knows what she wants with a boy, and likes sex for those reasons, not because it has some larger significance, plot or otherwise. I think this makes readers uncomfortable. Most of the bad reviews written about this novel seem to attend to this discomfort, but strangely, without naming it directly. Instead, reviewers call Angel “superficial,” and “boring,” and most are deeply uncomfortable not with Angel’s sexuality, but that she makes a bad choice in partners and doesn’t get punished. But I don’t think these reviewers just want Angel to be punished for an indiscretion – they want Angel to be punished for not adhering to the code of acceptable YA sexuality. The reactions here feel like an updated version of the 1970s panic over Judy Blume’s Forever…

So unsettling, yes. A book that every reader would feel comfortable handing off to their 12-year-old child? Perhaps not. But I do think Angel’s perspective is unique, the writing evocative, and the mood beachy and sultry and all other things I like about summer.

And contrary to some angry reviewers, I don’t think this book bears much resemblance to that other piece of New Jersey-themed Televised Fiction. However, since I have honestly (Honestly) never seen an episode in my life, I am really just speculating. I think there was a little laundry, but no gym and no tanning, and no mention of hair gel, bleeped out swear words, or anything else that the media has led me to associate with the Jersey Shore.