all the Sisterhood of the Traveling pants vibes!!

Lainie, Daniella, Penny, and Carly meet up at the beach every summer and do a summer bucket list - they call themselves the Summer Sisters

In winter of the year the girls are 14, though, Carly dies, and the summer following that is really confusing for the girls. They don’t know how to just be a trio and they realize Carly was sort of the glue keeping them together. They also suddenly have jobs and school stuff taking up their summer that they’ve never had before, so summer will look WAY different than normal.

Penny’s family life is strained, Lainie’s grandparents are selling their bakery at the shore, and Daniella won’t even be at the beach for most of the summer - she’s spending it in Carly’s family’s apartment for the free NYC boarding while she attends a music program.

Everything is changing so fast… then Daniella finds Carly’s unfinished bucket list for this summer, the one she didn’t make it to 🥲 The girls decide they’ll check stuff off the list and have a great summer for Carly’s sake. They’ll do stuff like create a viral hashtag, try one of every single item from the candy store, and take a photobooth picture with the town grouch. But their new dynamics do not come easily, especially in the face of so many other life changes, and there’s times they aren’t sure they’ll even be friends by next summer, let alone finish the list.

This is a friendship story, a grief story, and a coming of age story, and I teared up quiteee a few times… there’s nothing like the total newness of being 14 🥹

A feel-good YA summer read about female friendship perfect for fans of The sisterhood of the traveling pants books. I really enjoyed each of the girls and seeing their growth over the summer as they try to complete bucket lists each year they make as a group while dealing with grief over the loss of one of their members. Good on audio too narrated by Stacey Gonzales with really excellent therapy and mental health rep. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Have you found yourself looking for a more modern The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants where tragedy strikes the group that hovers between MG and YA? Well, you have found it! As a New Jersey native, I could see myself reading this one on the beach and feeling so immersed in the story. I feel like my freshmen would really love this one. I enjoyed it but it definitely is targeting an audience that aligns with the age of the group in the book. The narration is very well done on this one: Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC!

This audiobook had some sort of a glitch. It would repeatedly skip words or skip part of words. It was just too distracting and too hard to guess what was being said. I did not finish it.

3.5 stars rounded up.

This is right on that line between MG and YA. The content is heavy with loss, but generally MG appropriate.

I appreciated the ways that the story developed in believable ways--the dynamics shifting, people not knowing how to anchor each other as they mature and also grapple with the loss of the gravitational center of their friend group. The real pain of a close group of friends having other friends and managing those transitions was a lot of the heart of this book--and how those shifts just kept echoing the deeper shift of their friend's death the previous year.

There were parts that i felt dragged but overall i think this is a good offering. It would be good in middle school or high school libraries.

Book Title: When We Had Summer
Author: Jennifer Castle
Narrator: Stacy Gonzales
Publisher: Disney Audiobooks
Genre: YA/Teen
Pub Date: April 25, 2023
My Rating: 3.5 rounded up
Pages: 336

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants meets 13 Little Blue Envelopes in this new young adult novel about a tight-knit, daring, and eclectic group of friends.

Yes I was drawn to this story as the blurb got my attention. I read “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” several years ago and loved it. Also read “13 Little Blue Envelopes”.

In this story four best friends Carly, Daniella, Lainie, and Penny who are basically very different but are the same in the summer. For many years they have been spending their summers together in the seaside town of Ocean Park Heights on the Jersey Shore.
They call themselves “The Summer Sisters’ and have a summer tradition of completing a ‘SSBL’ (Summer Sisters Bucket List).However this is the summer before entering high school and everything is changing. Daniella has been accepted and will be attending a special music academy in NYC,
Lainie’s family is moving as her grandparents sold the bakery, and
Penny is not sure what high school will bring.
They are all mourning and struggling with the sudden death of Carly; none of them were aware she had a heart problem.
They decide that since this just may be their last summer together they will try to complete the summer's bucket list that Carly left behind.

Although the story if different from “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” It is a story of friends growing physically, emotionally and mentally. They’re getting first jobs and first boyfriends, going to new schools

I did enjoy this story~ I rated it 3.5 as I thought it was better than a 3 Star – good but not 4 Star- Great.
However, since I loved the ended I rounded up!

Want to thank NetGalley and Disney Audiobooks for granted me this early Audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for April 25, 2023

This book!

So many feelings in the early teen years. This book touches on them all. From grief to jealousy to abandoned to joy to love to finding one’s place in their current life and their place in new experiences. It’s hard to be a teen girl!

The Summer Sister’s are embarking on a new journey without the glue that has always held them together. Carly was the friend/family who initially brought all four girls together but after she passed she left them one last summer bucket list. Will the list bring them closer together or push them to their limits breaking all the friendships in the process? Definitely go on this journey and see where it takes each Summer Sister individually and as a group.

Perfect YA read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the chance to read and review.

I loved this book so much! I really didn’t know what it was about when I started reading it, but I quickly was obsessed! The characters are well developed, and I couldn’t help but love them all!

A well written story focusing on a group of friends that set out each summer to complete a bucket list. When one of the girls dies unexpectedly, the rest must decide if they should continue the summer ritual. A bit of a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants vibe. The characters were well developed and the pacing was on point. All together an enjoyable book.

Audiobook Review - This is so much more than a summer middle grade read! The characters are fully fleshed out and so is the loss that they are all experiencing. The characters are trying to enjoy their summer traditions while coming to terms with the empty space that used to be taken up by their friend, their summer sister. Highly recommended for all Teen collections!

When i read this book was for fans of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and 13 Blue envelopes I was in. I was not prepared for the heavy content the book contained. It was so well done though. There are several big topics discussed in this book, many of which readers will relate to. This book is a great book for those looking for something more than middle grade but not quite young adult.