As a result, I did not finish my Summer Fun Review Wrap Up by Labor Day. Fear not. For those of us who eat, sleep and breathe the shore life, we all know, the beach season isn't over for a week or two after Labor Day, so I think I can squeak the last couple in there.
Today's selection is about a girl that is ready to experience a summer of love at the Jersey Shore. Aren't we all?
Publication Date: September 1, 2011
Lexie is ready to spend her last summer before college at the beach and she's armed with the perfect plan to find her dream guy. The only problem? Lexie doesn't realize that it's impossible to plan love.
From the rude, arrogant lifeguard she meets on her first night in town to the adorable hero next door, Lexie's summer takes wrong turn after wrong turn as she figures out how to overcome a friend's betrayal, a less-than-glamorous job at the local amusement park, and a catastrophe that threatens to ruin everything she's worked for as she decides if her perfect love is worth fighting for.
My Review:
Lexie has graduated from High School and before heading off to college, she is going to stay with her grandparents at the Jersey Shore, in a place called Ship's Wreck. She had a perfect summer planned, including meeting the perfect guy, but not everything turns out the way it's planned.
On her first day arriving at her grandparent's beach front house, Lexie takes an evening stroll on the beach, just wanted to feel the sand between her toes. She figures the beach should be more or less deserted and the lifeguards should have all gone by now. She finds a group of guys playing whiffle ball, but doesn't want to walk by them, so instead she climbs up on one of the deserted lifeguard stands. She watches them and laments her bad luck in relationships when her thoughts are disturbed by one of the lifeguards giving her crap for trespassing on private property, i.e., the lifeguard stand. They get off on the wrong foot and after a heated argument, Lexie stalks off. That was her first encounter with Jeff the lifeguard.
Lexie meets up with her close friends, Pia and Joey, who she hangs out whenever she's visited. The three of them plan to go to a bonfire at friend's house that evening. Lexie figures it will be a good chance to kick off her summer of love, but she sees a sight which makes her wish she hadn't shown up; Jeff the lifeguard dancing intimately with a gorgeous blond. She shouldn't care, especially after he was such a jerk to her when they first met, but it upsets her nonetheless and she walks away from the fire towards the water edge.
Jeff comes up to her wanting to make sure she was okay because he saw her looking when he was dancing and knew she was upset. If her first encounter was bad, it was nothing compared to her second encounter. Jeff comes off as an arrogant jerk. He basically says he knows she's into him, but that he never led her on and he has a girlfriend. He continues to insult her until she is rescued by a newcomer she hadn't met before.
As it turns out, the mystery man is the son of her next door neighbor, Anthony. With him being new in town, Lexie takes Anthony on a tour of Ship's Wreck, but the tour is shortened for a romp in the surf. When Anthony plays a little too rough and Lexie ends up being injured, it is Jeff the lifeguard who rides in to save the day.
Anthony takes Lexie for ice cream to make up for injuring her and the bump into Joey and Pia. Once Anthony heads home, Pia can't stop talking about Anthony, which annoys Lexie, but her day is about to get worse. When she gets back to her grandmother's she's been told her mom got her a summer job...at the amusement park.
Now she's afraid her summer of love will turn into a summer of lame.
Lexie is a girl who knows what her heart wants, even if it keeps changing its mind. She was determined to have a summer of love, so every guy she saw was a potential love interest. First she sees the guys playing n the beach and thinks any of them could be her love interest. Then she meets Jeff, but he turns out to be a jerk, so she decides she doesn't like him and then she meets Anthony. Well, I can't say I haven't been there. I guess I was pretty fickle in high school. I'd like to say I grew out of it by the time I graduated High School, but I can't say that with certainty.
Her best friend, Pia, is a self serving little back stabbing wench. Can't say I haven't been in that position either.
This was a shorter story, but there was a lot I could relate to. I was a beach bum until I turned 24 when I moved away and hit the hills. But I still love driving home to visit family and driving down the strip along the ocean. I could relate to Lexie as well, although she was a bit too quick to love and a bit too quick to move on. Does she get her summer of love and end up with the perfect guy?
For me, this was a sweet story about summertime love just perfect for an afternoon basking in the sun.
Some of my favorite lines:
Lexie, thinking about the boys on the beach: "Even though I decided to sit here so I could avoid the guys, I couldn’t stop my eyes from wandering back over to them. Six of them played in all and that right there should have presented me with six chances to find love, or, heck, I’d probably even settle for like and nothing else at this point."
Jeff to Lexie on their second encounter: “Lexie. Please. I know you had expectations about what would happen between us this summer. It was written all over your face on the beach before. But how could you think anything would happen with us? You had to have assumed that I had a girlfriend. I’m a Jersey shore lifeguard!”
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