Guest Review: My sister reviews Summer's Dream by Cathy Cassidy

Hello! I have something a little different for you today. My sister has written a review for Summer's Dream by Cathy Cassidy (on the grounds I would include her picture...) so here it is! She's a huuuuge fan of Cathy Cassidy and has been reading her books for a long time.

So, this is my sister Ellie:

As you can see, she got the pretty gene out of the two of us. And the naturally blonde hair. Ellie is 18, has the worst taste in tv shows, music and films EVER but this is balanced by the fact the ends of her hair are now purple. Ellie is just about to sit her final A Level exams, works much harder than I ever did and hopes to go to York Uni to study Sociology in September. Ellie's real name is Eleanor, but everyone calls her Ellie except me. I call her Eleanor. She calls me 'bitch'.





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Summer's Dream (The Chocolate Box Girls #3)
Release Date: 7th June 2012
Publisher: Puffin
Source: Review Copy from Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Description from Amazon:

The next scrumptious story in Cathy Cassidy's Chocolate Box Girls series.

Summer has always dreamed of dancing, and when a place at ballet school comes up, she wants it so badly it hurts.

Middle school ends and the holidays begin, but unlike her sisters, Summer has no time for lazy days and sunny beach parties. The audition becomes her obsession, and things start spiralling out of control . . .

The more Summer tries to find perfection, the more lost she becomes. Will she realise - with the help of the boy who wants more than friendship - that dreams come in all shapes and sizes?


Ellie's thoughts:

Summer’s Dream is the third in ‘The Chocolate Box Girls’ series written by Cathy Cassidy.

I have been reading Cathy’s books since I was 11 years old so to have the chance to review this was an honour. 

 After about 5 minutes of screaming ‘OHMYGOD’ at the book that had appeared on my pillow whilst I had been at college I got down to reading and finished the book that evening. For me being an astonishingly slow reader, that was quite an achievement.  [She really did this, my mum could hear her downstairs-C Also, she really is a slow reader. We're talking a book a month. And these aren't big books either.]

I felt that in this book Cathy has taken more of a risk, entwining issues that teenage girls face whilst going through their teenage years and how this can spiral out of control with her usual ‘girl meets boy’ style of writing.  It was nice to see a bit of a different and more serious focus in this book and I feel that it was portrayed very well. The book holds a deeper meaning, as if to raise awareness to girls reading it. 

The story itself was very good and I found myself relating to some of the issues in Summer’s life. Summer always felt as if she was always in the shadows of her sisters and their talents. I’m sure many teenage girls, including myself, feel like this occasionally. The way I can relate to characters makes the book so much better. It enables me to feel the emotion of the characters and experience anticipation at upcoming events.

However, I did find the story a little predictable. I was able to guess what was going to happen later on in the story at an early stage. This didn’t ruin the book for me, I still enjoyed reading every page. I'm not sure if this was just because I've read all Cathy's books over and over and am therefore so used to her writing style, or whether this book was just a little more predictable than usual. Either way, it did take away from my enjoyment of the book a little bit.

It was disappointing for me that I didn’t really connect with Alfie, the leading male character. Usually in Cathy’s books I find it easy to fall in love with the male character. I think he needed to be written about in a bit more depth so as a reader I could have got to know him a little better. Plus, I felt he wasn't always shown in a very good light, and I think this added to me not really falling for him as I usually would.

I like how the book links in with the previous stories in the series but at the same time how a reader wouldn’t necessarily have to read the previous books in the series to understand what was going on. Each book is about each sister and each sister has a story to tell, but the books still have the same theme and have the perfect balance of different perspectives of the same situation and the sister’s own story. 

Overall, it was an amazing story with a good twist at the end. I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed but I would recommend it to anyone.  All of Cathy’s books have the ability to inspire, including this one.

I’d give it a 4/5.

And there we have it, Ellie's first ever review. Ellie hopes you enjoyed what she had to say and that it encourages you to pick up a Cathy Cassidy book no matter your age, but would like to remind you that all Cathy's male characters are HER book boyfriends, not yours.