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A review by silvae
Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno
4.0
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault (happens off-screen, vaguely described)
A charming, gentle read. I'm really not one for magic in the books that I read, but Summer of Salt managed to hit a sweet spot where I did not mind it at all. The closest comparison I can draw is to Kiki's Delivery Service, and I think that that's a close match.
The book is a solid YA contemporary, whimsical and well thought-out without trying too hard. Some passages felt off and didn't quite fit the tone of the book (Georgie's use of language, for example). This was especially the case in the second half of the book, though it can be argued that the plot is to blame for that. Still, this unevenness was too strong for me to give it a full five stars; there was a lot of polishing that could have been done, in my opinion.
A central message of the book was later "fleshed out" in a way that felt immensely out of place. While it is most definitely an important message and handled more delicately here than in some other YA novels, I still would have preferred a different treatment. Perhaps this is a genre-specific qualm I have, as I recall Radio Silence having similar issues.
Something positive, though: the romance in this novel was handled very well, and I appreciated that our narrator's sexuality wasn't a big plotline, bar the usual "is this ridiculously cute girl also into me or are we just gal pals?". I also really loved the birdheads. Having lived near the coast and in prime birdwatching territory for many years in the past, I found these tourist groups to be very endearing.
Either way, this is a book I would gladly pick up to read again next summer, as it's the perfect quick garden/beach read (my reading time clocked in at less than 3 hours) and manages to capture the feeling of the last seaside summer before college quite well.
A charming, gentle read. I'm really not one for magic in the books that I read, but Summer of Salt managed to hit a sweet spot where I did not mind it at all. The closest comparison I can draw is to Kiki's Delivery Service, and I think that that's a close match.
The book is a solid YA contemporary, whimsical and well thought-out without trying too hard. Some passages felt off and didn't quite fit the tone of the book (Georgie's use of language, for example). This was especially the case in the second half of the book, though it can be argued that the plot is to blame for that. Still, this unevenness was too strong for me to give it a full five stars; there was a lot of polishing that could have been done, in my opinion.
A central message of the book was later "fleshed out" in a way that felt immensely out of place. While it is most definitely an important message and handled more delicately here than in some other YA novels, I still would have preferred a different treatment. Perhaps this is a genre-specific qualm I have, as I recall Radio Silence having similar issues.
Something positive, though: the romance in this novel was handled very well, and I appreciated that our narrator's sexuality wasn't a big plotline, bar the usual "is this ridiculously cute girl also into me or are we just gal pals?". I also really loved the birdheads. Having lived near the coast and in prime birdwatching territory for many years in the past, I found these tourist groups to be very endearing.
Either way, this is a book I would gladly pick up to read again next summer, as it's the perfect quick garden/beach read (my reading time clocked in at less than 3 hours) and manages to capture the feeling of the last seaside summer before college quite well.