Well, I only made it half way thru this book before calling it quits. I really didn't think I would dislike this book the way I did. But, to be honest, as a camp kid myself (though nothing like the rich kid kind in this book), I was hoping for something better than what I got. There were things that made me smile in memory of my camp experience, but those were few and far between. Mostly I was bugged by the short, choppy chapters, by the sudden switches in "tensions" between characters, by the glaring lack of any context or background for the things that were happening and, finally, the unexplored intimate nature of some of the relationships. I didn't buy any of it, frankly.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the PRC.

Mandy Berman did such a fantastic job on her first novel. It brought back a flood of memories and was the true coming of age, summer camp story. The characters and their friendship, lies and truths make the book a great summer read.

Perennials by Mandy Berman is one of those novels that makes me despair of ever writing a good book.

The story centers around a summer camp, and the format matches the setting. Stories are told in short, intense bursts, without fully resolving the endings. The novel switches between different girls as main characters, but avoids the YA standard of alternating first-person viewpoints.

There's so much going on in Perennials, with female relationships at the forefront. Sisters, mothers and daughters, little girl friends, teenage friendships. There are male characters, but they're defined much more in relation to the women.

Little girls begin at summer camp, excited for crafts, swimming and horses with the bunkmate besties, but as they get older, they discover that some girls get their own horses. Some girls get their own fathers, they discover, while some are secret daughters of secret mistresses. Some girls can attract boys, or men. This is a hard one to review without spoilers, since discovering along with the characters is what makes this book work so well. There's a real sense of discovery and realization throughout the story, whether it's a little girl noticing the differences between herself and her best camp friend, or a woman uncovering the problems in her marriage.

Good fit for fans of Bennington Girls Are Easy or The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.

This book is a great YA summer book. This book explores how in society it is all about who you know and your social cliques even at a young age. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

I loved the nostalgia and secrets in this book, explaining the secret lives of girls very well.

I really wanted to like this book, the blurb had me feeling excited to read it. Unfortunately with so many characters and their varying point of view, it was too much.

I was fairly excited to receive this book and delved into it immediately.. I loved the aspect of camp and the friendship there. I did not care for the parts about her mother and how she got pulled over and had to call her dad. That her dad had an affair with her mother and that part of her life. I would have liked to see that from the perspective of Rachel not of her mother.

This is from an advance review copy, for which I thank the publisher.

This novel didn't work for me. The blurb did, which is to say that it did its job and lured me in, but it was, as usual, misleading. If I'd known Kirkus had praised it, I would have definitely skipped it, because Kirkus pretty much praises everything, which means their reviews are completely worthless, but I didn't and the blurb sounded good, so I bought into it. The story is presented as a summer camp story, but in fact this particular story could have been set in a variety of other venues and still been essentially the same story, so I never saw the advantage of the camp setting except maybe as a nostalgia lure for readers. There really was nothing about the camp which was essential to the story being told, and the camp suffered by being merely one more "character" which became lost in the mass of people ambling among the pages.

This is also presented as a story of two people meeting as young adults after knowing each other as children. There's a giant jump from their early teens when they are at camp, to their life after their college freshman year, but it's misleading, because the two have never been apart in any meaningful sense, so there really was no drama to it, and no sense of anything changing or fulminating. I think it would have made for a better story to have followed them through their first year in college. Largely the same kind of events could have transpired in such a story, and it would have felt more organic and more real.

Even as it was, the story would have been a more entertaining if we could have focused on the relationship between these two girls, but they were quickly pushed very much into the background by the plethora of other characters who were quickly ushered in and out. Instead of a coherent story we got a potpourri of people, and this messy patchwork never let the reader get to know a single one of them properly. It was like looking at snapshots in a photo album at an orphanage. You know there's a bunch of stories there worth the telling, but you can't grasp any one of them from the narrow, static glimpses you get into these lives. The collage overwhelms the power of the story, which gets lost: all the actors became minor characters, and there are so many of them that it's impossible to actually care about anyone.

So the story is that Rachel Rivkin and Fiona Larkin used to meet every summer at Camp Marigold. That's the extended prologue, although it isn't called a prologue. For me it could have been dispensed with altogether. The main story begins when both girls come back to Marigold, but this time as counselors. We're told that their relationship is more complicated, but I saw no evidence of this. The bottom line is that Rachel is a jerk and Fiona is a whiner. For these "sins", both are punished towards the end of the story, but the 'punishment' didn't match the 'crime', so that was a fail for me, and neither of these people was entertaining or interesting, or had anything new or worthwhile to offer. Yes, there are two tragic events. I guess the blurb writer doesn't count drunken rape as tragic. I'd have to disagree on that one. Either that or the blurb-writer never actually read the story before describing it to us.

I never went to summer camp, which is why I have found several such stories to be interesting, but this one was not, and at least one aspect of it struck me as highly improbable. The camp Fiona and Rachel attend is not that spectacular. It's supposed to cater to rich kids, but it's a rather shabby and resource-lacking little concern, so this made very little sense to me. It also lacked credibility in that for reasons unexplained, the camp seemed to be a huge magnet for international camp counselors! I found that hard to believe. Like I said, I've never attended a camps, so maybe camps really are like this. I have no problem accepting that foreign counselors might want to come to US camps. What I found beyond credibility was that so many of them would want to come to this particular one!

So overall, not a worthy read for me. I can't recommend this one.

Really uneven, heavy-handed writing. I didn't really care about what happened to any of these people. It was pretty boring for a book where one of the main characters gets raped and another one dies. There was a wide variety of characters, and one positive thing I can say is that they were a diverse and somewhat interesting, if not totally sympathetic, cast. But some of the side narratives seem to have no point except for to allow the author to wax nostalgic about summer camp. It's an impulse I understand--I loved camp. But I wouldn't recommend this book as a way of indulging those nostalgic cravings for summer memories.

I did enjoy this and it went quick, but it was particularly memorable.

I thought the plot would be more focused, but instead it meandered over to some other fringe characters for a chapter or part of a chapter, characters whose tie ins didn't seem that important to the overall story. That being said, I'm not really sure what the overall story was. At the beginning, I thought there was one, focused on Rachel and Fiona, but because of the aforementioned meandering, in the middle I began to think maybe it was just random stories of those involved in the camp, and then it came back to Rachel and Fiona at the end, but it waits too long for the punch it hits you with to really land.

It just didn't seem to flow together. Sometimes that lack of flow frustrates me but I didn't mind here too much. I just wasn't wowed.

This was a normal summer beach read. Childhood vs Adulthood. Perfect cover for the book

This is another example of a book I really wanted to like. The sleepaway camp setting is one I am familiar with, and I was very interested in seeing how the friendship between Rachel and Fiona grew and changed, as per the summary. What I got instead - a mix of random characters, way too many characters to actually care about any of them. There was definitely not enough of Fiona and Rachel and the event that "brought them together" at the end just felt forced and out of nowhere. And while I understand that some things in life just happen with no rhyme or reason, I wasn't invested enough in the characters to care.

Some aspects of summer camp are universal, regardless of the type of camp, and Perennials reflects this startlingly. Even though Camp Marigold bears little resemblance to my own beloved camp, the lives of campers and staff is achingly familiar. I loved this book. I loved the truth in it, and the way each page propelled me deeper into this summer, wondering how it was all going to turn out. A must read for anyone who loved camp or anyone who wanted a camp to love. A true honoring of camp experiences.

I loved the first half of this book. Learning about Rachel and Fiona's childhood, family, and time spent at camp and how that helped them form as young adults was fascinating. However, the second part of the book kind-of lost me. The abrupt switch to Nell and Mo, while interesting, didn't seem to flow as well as the rest of the book. And, I thought the surprise ending was more gratuitous than necessary to the plot. However, these flaws are made up for by the reminiscent feel of the book and the examination of social class.

I really enjoyed reading about the sometimes love/hate relationship between BFF's Rachel and Fiona. I felt for Fiona many times where Rachel would take what should have belonged to Fiona but at the same time felt for Rachel who was experiencing deep hurt due to family and personal issues. I also enjoyed the complexity of the camper characters. Each one brought something to the story which can be hard to distinguish in books with so many characters. Usually one gets left off in the corner leaving the reader unsatisfied.
This is a true (albeit cliche word) coming of age story. Fiona and Rachel return to the camp they grew up in as children but this time as counselors trying to make a difference in the kids lives while having that last "hurrah" at camp. The story does play with emotions and you will want to hug the characters one page and strangle them a few pages later! Great summertime (or anytime!) read!

This sweet story began with interesting character's exploring the times they spent at a summer camp. Although the author attempted to describe each of the main characters back stories, I thought they could have been delved into more deeply. I found them to be superficial and lacking in depth and meaning as to why each of them were important to the story and why each of them chose to attend this summer camp. It was a quick read and that might be because I found myself skipping over the overly descriptive narratives relating to the trees and the settings that were just superficial to the story. The most disappointing aspect of this novel, was that all of a sudden,it wrapped up, like the author got bored.

This was the underbelly of responsibility: When things went wrong, the fingers turned back at you.”

A friendship that begins at summer camp as children carries two young women back to camp as counselors. The story opens at Camp Marigold , Rachel Rivkin and Fiona Larkin become childhood friends bonded by their shared experiences there. As is often the case in the most lasting friendships, the two come from completely different homes and worlds. Rachel’s raised by a single mother, her father absent- a chunk of her life a secret. Where her mother comes off as a train wreck, and her life less sheltered than Fiona’s, there is love. Denise’s set up with Rachel’s father is complicated and she pulled the short stick but he has means, and not much else to give their daughter. Growing up in a home where a beautiful mother has only herself to rely on can leave edges on a kid but it also can make them stronger, more outgoing. Rachel has spunk, ease with friends and boys as the girls hit their teens. Her life is full of experience, simply by where she comes from. Her secrets are always bigger than Fiona’s, and there is envy as much as their is love in their friendship. Fiona is another story, where Rachel is fun and worldly, attractive- Fiona feels average and boring. Her side of the friendship is being the ‘responsible one’, always sober about everything in life, in every moment. Can you love and hate your best friend at the same time?

Along with their story, the year the friends return as camp counselors, Fiona’s pretty, shy little sister Helen joins the camp. In many ways, she doesn’t have the same ambition of her siblings, never one to do anything but what she chooses. There is a strain between the sisters, and Fiona often seems negative and sour, so much so that Helen wonders how in the world she and the vibrant Rachel are friends. How can college be so wonderful when her sister is gloomy? Helen is drawn to kids from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ which is anyone less fortunate than her family. Lucky for her, Rachel is in charge of her cabin.

A lot of what hit me is how Fiona victimizes herself despite her privilege and Rachel has much more in her life to whine about and yet doesn’t. Both exhaust each other as they grow, one being more wild the other too tame. There are more stories about counselors and campers, the parents, but the main focus is on Fiona and Rachel. People change, and friendships can be a weight as much as they can uplift you. Life is precious and the universe can seem random, and this final summer at camp is going to change all of them.

I never went to camp, I spent my summers on the beach or swimming in my pool, going to Disney World with whichever relative came around.. but I got a taste of it reading this novel. It’s not just about camp though, in fact it’s more about the pain of shedding our skin as we come of age, drifting away from friends and family. It’s about envy of friends and even siblings, how our parent’s disastrous love molds us and why we need people different from ourselves to grow. The end was sad, didn’t expect that. For those hungry to walk down memory lane of their summers at camp and those who never went and wondered about it. This will be out just in time for summer reading.

Publication Date: June 6, 2017

Random House

I couldn't understand who this book was for--young adults? Real adults? The perspective shifted from character to character without any real system or reason. Is summer camp meant to be a metaphor for something? I found the book tedious in the end.

Perennials is a novel that spans from 2000 - 2006. The story starts with the story of two camp friends and then moves forward in time to when they are back at camp as counselors.

I thought this would be a light read about summer camp, but this novel turned out to be something much deeper. It's about the secrets we keep in order to fit in with society and to present a certain type of life and lifestyle to those that don't know us well.

I never got to go to camp when I was a kid. I think that this affected how I reacted to this book. I understood through the excellent writing that camp creates a strong bond, but I don't feel like I really <i>got</i> it.

I really wanted to like this book, the blurb had me feeling excited to read it. Unfortunately with so many characters and their varying point of view, it was too much. Jumping from one person to another and then adding their parents to the story left it difficult to really connect with them and care about what was happening. A lot of information was piled on with each character we met and it felt like a chore to get through it all. As a result the twist at the end didn't have the impact i think the author was hoping for.