THE LOST SUMMER

Williams has all the right ingredients for a popular tale of lost innocence and fraught friendships. Unfortunately, flat characters and a predictable, painfully slow plot limit the appeal of this summer-camp story. First-person narration should make the events described feel more immediate, but instead brief, after-the-fact introductions to each section create a sense of distance. Helena tells readers about her fractured family, her best (camp) friend and her excitement at finally being a counselor, but it’s unlikely they’ll feel the emotions she describes. Her longtime crush on a counselor from a nearby boy’s camp is consummated in a hayloft, but even that momentous event feels remarkably pedestrian (realistic, perhaps, but hardly compelling reading). Subsequent misunderstandings with friends are followed by a boating accident that leaves Helena in a coma for weeks. The accident and its aftermath, including an epilogue, are squeezed into the last 23 pages, once again muting the readers’ potential emotional response. Midway between a thoughtful novel and escapist reading, this effort doesn’t succeed at being either. (Fiction. YA)