My review of A Midsummer's Nightmare

A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger
Release Date: February 6, 2014
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Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

A Midsummer's Nightmare is an unavoidable contemporary romance that you will not be able to put down until the very end as it grabs your attention from the first page through the author's humorous writing style. I've heard plenty of great things about Kody Keplinger's books but I wasn't sure about this one, and that is why I'm so shocked... I fell so fast for it! 

Keplinger opens with a painfully awkward scene, yet so absolutely hilarious you won't be able to stop yourself laughing. Whitley wakes up from a drunken one night stand, and just as she tries to sneak away quietly, he wakes up and asks for her number. She turns him down extremely bluntly as she knows she'll never see him again anyway as they are both off to college. But her dad, who she only sees in the summer, has a surprise for her; he has fiancee. And she has two children.... One being her drunk one night stand boy... Oops.

Whitley is sarcastic, blunt and not so easy to like at first as we see her as a "I don't need any friends and I don't want any, leave me alone" kind of girl. However, as we learn more about her past and her current life situation, we begin to understand what has shaped her to be the way she is. Though she definitely progresses a vast amount as a character through the book and you will end up loving her by the end.

Nathan. *Sigh* NathanNathanNathan. Could there have been any other boy in this book that would have made me swoon as much as I did? Erm, no. This boy... Honestly. He is the perfect mixture between hot and adorable nerd. And fine, whatever, he and Whitley are going to become step-brother and step-sister? I just couldn't care less really all through the book I was cheering them on; I needed them together so bad. They are the cutest contemporary pair that I have read about in a long while.

I really loved seeing Whitley progress with the help from her new family, but also Harrison. He is a guy that Whitley tried to make a move on before he laughs in her face and tells her he swings the other way. He's simply hilarious and adds heaps of humor to the storyline; not like it needed anymore, but he was fabulous.

I would definitely recommend A Midsummer's Nightmare to anyone who loves a good and enjoyable contemporary which deals with issues both heavy and light; family, friends, relationships, etc. I will 100% be getting down and reading some more of Keplinger's books as I enjoyed this immensely.

Rating

A review copy was provided by the publisher