Mini-Book Review: Summer of Yesterday by Gaby Triana

Summer of Yesterday
Author: Gaby Triana
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction | Time Travel
Released: June 17th 2014
Review Source: Purchased

Back to the Future meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High when Haley’s summer vacation takes a turn for the retro in this totally rad romantic fantasy.

Summer officially sucks. Thanks to a stupid seizure she had a few months earlier, Haley’s stuck going on vacation with her dad and his new family to Disney’s Fort Wilderness instead of enjoying the last session of summer camp back home with her friends. Fort Wilderness holds lots of childhood memories for her father, but surely nothing for Haley. But then a new seizure triggers something she’s never before experienced—time travel—and she ends up in River Country, the campground’s long-abandoned water park, during its heyday.

The year? 1982.

And there—with its amusing fashion, “oldies” music, and primitive technology—she runs into familiar faces: teenage Dad and Mom before they’d even met. Somehow, Haley must find her way back to the twenty-first century before her present-day parents anguish over her disappearance, a difficult feat now that she’s met Jason, one of the park’s summer residents and employees, who takes the strangely dressed stowaway under his wing.

Seizures aside, Haley’s used to controlling her life, and she has no idea how to deal with this dilemma. How can she be falling for a boy whose future she can’t share?

I really and truly loved most of this book. I wish it would’ve ended on a better note, which I was crushed with the ending.

Haley is a sarcastic normal teen aged girl and I enjoyed reading through her point of view. I found myself unable to put the book down. It was well written and the time traveling isn't a common story-line, so I loved that it was different than a lot of books I've read. Jason and Haley had great chemistry, and with all the running around, hiding, and stolen kisses, the more I was expecting to be blown away. And BAM, the ending kind of killed it for me.

I know every story can’t have a happily ever after, but this was pretty awful. Not sure why she would end it like that. I guess I was expecting some creativity to make it all work. I can’t get past the ending to recommend this book, but if not for that it would have been perfect.