“The Summer of Broken Rules” — An Amateur Review

2.5/5 Stars

Meredith Fox has not been to her family’s farm on Martha’s Vineyard since her sister died. She is also recently single, and is about to go to a college just down the street from her house. Only the wedding of her enigmatic cousin Sarah could force her to push through, and face the grief over her sister that she has yet to overcome. Plus, the family’s traditional game of Assassin that Meredith has promised to win in Claire’s honor. And of course, a summer in paradise can’t be complete without a little romance either.

This YA romance novel by K.L. Walther has been sitting on my shelf for years. I worried that I had grown out of the demographic. Plus, The Summer I Turned Pretty has always given me my yearly dosage of cheesy New England summer romance.

There were a few things this book did well, and there were some things that just didn’t work for me.

First, the romance. Stephen “Wit” Witry and Meredith have a not so ideal first meeting (her falling out of the roof of her car and giving him a shiner). But what are the odds, that he is the groom’s stepbrother, and groomsman in the Sarah’s wedding? They quickly form a pact to feed each other information from either side of the family for the game of Assassin. The character of Wit fell a bit flat for me. It didn’t feel like he had much depth, or served much purpose, other than to be there for Meredith. The romance itself was much too insta-lovey for me. Now, I know not everything has to be a 600+ page angsty slow burn — but when they are already kissing a third of the way through the book, it dissuades me to finish reading. And given the fact that the book takes place over the span of week, the pace of the romance felt a little unrealistic.

I get the sense that the author didn’t want the main focus of this book to be the romance, but I wish she had focused more on the character’s grief, and relationships with her family.

Meredith herself annoyed me. She was self-aware, I’ll give her that, but she kept repeating the same mistakes she had faced consequences for in the past. She never listened to the people around her, and it felt like it was always her fault. I wish that we got to see more interactions with Meredith and her cousins, especially Lulli. Their conflict felt like just a way to try to get the reader to feel bad for Meredith, but I honestly didn’t. She was portrayed as very “not like other girls”, which is almost always insufferable for me.

One of the highlights of this book for me was the atmosphere itself. The setting of a family farm at Martha’s Vineyard makes it the summer read. That being said, some of the descriptions were a bit confusing, especially regarding the family. Any book that deals with a big family is bound to get a little muddy, but this one I felt was particularly hard to keep up with. Especially when there are characters that are only mentioned once or twice.

Also, can we talk about the title? What rule was broken? I guess it could be referring to the final Assassin showdown, but other than that I was a bit confused.

To finish this short and very amateur book review out, this book fell flat for me. Perhaps I have just aged out of the YA genre, as I’m sure I would have completely fallen for this book in middle school. But as a 22 year old reader, this book was not for me.