A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger
Release Date: June 5, 2012
Publisher: Poppy
Source: Bought
Rating: Enjoyable

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.

Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about. - Goodreads

More awesome work from Kody Keplinger. As usual, she is able to perfectly capture a teen lifestyle and mould it to fit the deeper issue at hand.

Whitley is suffering from her parents' divorce, and she is dealing with it by acting out as a cry for help. In the summer before college, she's going to spend the summer with her dad... and his new family that she knew nothing about.

I loved Whitley so much, just like I love all of Kody's main protagonists. I did find her to be annoyingly judgemental at times, particularly when she was at a party held by one of Kody's other MCs. Besides that, I loved her and her relationship with her new step sister and her step mother, which had both positive and negative moments. I wasn't a huge fan of her gay best friend, as he seemed very stereotypical and I feel he could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Nathan is Whitley's love interest and her soon-to-be stepbrother. If you were reading my updates on Goodreads then you will know that I didn't like him AT ALL. He was a horrible person and he was a bastard to Whitley. I'm sorry, but I could not root for the two of them after he flipped out over stupid things and called Whitley a whore. No thank you. I'm not a fan.

Aside from him, I really did like this book. I absolutely love Kody Keplinger's writing, and while I didn't love this book as much as I loved The DUFF, I still really, really liked A Midsummer's Nightmare.