This book has a beautiful story of self-acceptance running through it. I loved the female friendships represented in this book as well as the female/male friendship between Emma and Walter. The love story was filled with that angsty suspense that is so satisfying to read - especially as the book continued. There were some parts that required more of a stretch for believability, but overall a great read with an even more important pack of messages about loving yourself, accepting yourself, and taking care of yourself.

Really enjoyed this young adult/new adult novel. Pansexual and lesbian MCs.

Emma has faced a ton of challenges - depression, messy parent divorce, homophobic mum - but has finally graduated high school, is nearly 18 and has just one major hurdle left - two months court mandated visitation with her mum. But when she gets to Maine, her mum has decided to leave her behind at summer camp. Emma hates camp; is panic-inducingly afraid of the woods; and is stuck rooming with a mean-girl bully. But Emma also meets 19 year-old camp counselor, Vivian, so things may not be all bad.
I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this from NetGalley because I had heard good things, plus that cover and description convinced me to give it a go. Unfortunately I wasn't as pleased with it as I was by this cover. 

Emma thinks she is going to spend the summer with her mother repairing their relationship but instead is dumped off at a camp where she had a terrifying experience when she was younger, leading to a phobia of nature. She meets an old friend of hers, make a new friend and even finds another girl she really likes, Vivian Black, one of the counsellors. 

This book was such a mixed bag for me. There were parts which I really liked and other parts I didn't but when you put everything together, it wasn't a win for me. It started off in such a promising way. I really liked Emma and her relationship with her father. It was a very sweet, supportive relationship and we saw it more than were told it, and it made all the difference. Same as with her mother - we could tell that she had a fractured relationship with her mum from the get-go and so when her mum left her at the camp, we could see her disappointment about losing this opportunity to help mend her relationship with her mum. We got to see a bad parent, rather than an abusive parent, which was a great contrast with Emma's dad. I feel like people seem to try and classify parents as good or abusive and there is no in between. Emma's mother is distant, insensitive and homophobic - none of which would lead to a child being taken away or monitored by Social Services. But she is definitely a bad parent because that not is how you treat your child. So interesting parental relationships, I'm sorry they sort of dropped off when Emma went to camp. 

I also liked some scenes of Emma and Gwen and Emma and Vivian. Not all scenes, especially the ones in the first half of the book (Emma suddenly calling Gwen her best friend when they had barely hung out on page felt very out of the blue), but in the latter half of the book, I really liked seeing these two relationships together and having the platonic and romantic side by side as equally important to Emma. We got a lot of scenes between Emma and Vivian and I believed that they liked each other, which is one of the most important things I look for in a romance. 

That said, there were several things which detracted from my enjoyment. First of all, how Emma's phobia was treated. She has a phobia about the outdoors/nature and we see this interfere with her daily life in the first quarter of the book. Then Vivian takes out into the woods for a one night camping trip and Emma realised there was nothing to be afraid of and the phobia never came up again. That is not how phobias work, that isn't even how fears work! Exposure therapy is not 'force someone to spend one night in their fear and everything will be sorted' and it frustrated me that her fear was treated as an easily dealt with obstacle to the romance. It was disappointing, not only because it was made out of be a big part of the book, but also because when a phobia comes up, that is not how I want to see it dealt with. 

Another thing I didn't like was how Lauren was shown and treated. The predatory lesbian is a trope I hate, mostly because that was the homophobic trope I came across so much when I was growing up, and just because this is a female/female romance doesn't make it okay for that trope to come up. Yes, I'm not saying that just because a woman fancies other women doesn't make her a good person but this is a YA contemporary romance and they could have had Lauren as a villain without this kind of crap. I really liked Lauren's motivation about why she did what she did because that made her more of a well-rounded character who I could not like but felt sympathetic towards. I wasn't a huge fan of Lauren's ending because it felt like the adults around her failed her and she was punished for it. 

But I could have handled all of that, if not for the big thing. The writing style - it bored me. I put this book down at 70% and then didn't pick it up again for so long because it just did not flow for me. I was not reading to find out what happened, I didn't particularly care, I was reading to finish it. 

The premise was great and I liked parts of it, but so many parts fell short. 

3 stars!

This book 's concept was promising of summer romance and mental health representation and pride. However, it fell flat in many ways. Emma's narration and banter came off as annoying instead of funny. The tone reeks of 2010-harry-styles-wattpad type writing, instead of an actual novel. This made it hard to get through the book. Also, a lot of the things characters did made absolutely no sense plot-wise, and completely lacked motives for anything. This made a lot of the characters fall flat. This could have been better handled imo. The whole Lauren storyline was outright creepy. However, I liked the representation in this book.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Night Owls and Summer skies was such a cute summer camp romance that I enjoyed reading.

Emma has a lot going on in her life, and her mum dumping her at camp adds to the challenges. Camp delivers pain and suffering but also growth and hope.

I love the premise of summer camp and queer romance, but ultimately the characters fell a little flat for me. It took a while for me to come around to Emma, I really enjoyed her initial dynamic with her dad, but her lack of connection with camp friends (especially one she had been writing to for so long) seemed a bit confusing. Similarly, I wasn't a fan Vivian's mean spiritedness that supposedly stemmed from attraction and the inherent power dynamic between the two. All in all, it was a decent read, but not necessarily one I would jump to reread or recommend.

Nightowls and Summer Skies is a book about Emma Lane, a girl with depression and PTSD, who is forced by her overbearing mother to go to a summer camp. At said summer camp, she has summer camp drama, makes several friends, and even gets...a girlfriend?

While the premise of this story really had me interested, this book just left me confused.

I found that (most of) the characters were confusing and didn't have any direction to them. In one moment Emma, our main character, would be socially awkward and anxious about other people, and the next moment she would throw a tray at a bully. Speaking of the bully, Lauren, she was also very confusing and did not have any clear motive. At first, she was a b*tch for b*tches sake but then she seemed to have a slight backstory that made me feel for her, but it quickly got ruined by the creepy plotline that Sullivan added. The love interest, Vivian, was also very confusing. She was not fleshed out as a love interest and had no qualities besides the fact that she was a camp counselor and that she was gorgeous. The side characters were there just to add people to the summer camp. I believe that they had no thought put into them besides to just have quirky one-liners. The only character I enjoyed and thought had any sense of development was Gwen, Emma’s best friend. She was kind, thoughtful, and was fleshed out. Her motives were clear the entire time and she was the only character that kept me reading.

In regards to the relationship in the story, I found it cute? It had its moments where I felt like they actually cared for each other, but for the majority of their relationship, I did not feel any chemistry and was once again confused. At one point in the story, Emma decides that she would just not tell Vivian about something important? And after a brief stint of being angry, Vivian just decides to forgive her. I find miscommunication in books in very poor taste.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this story was that Emma was very secure in her sexuality. In many wlw stories, the main character is questioning and confused about their sexualities (which is a very important thing to be represented), but I was very refreshed to see a character who was so secure and so open about her sexuality.

Overall, I would give it 2 stars due to it not being extremely problematic, but being very confusing.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

“Night Owls And Summer Skies” is a young adult book that primarily takes place at a summer camp named Camp Mapplewood, and focuses on main character Emma Lane's experience at that camp throughout the course of the summer.

The beginning of the book reveals a lot about Emma's parents and the relationships they have with each other. She's very close with her dad, who is accepting of her sexuality, helped her get professional treatment for her mental illnesses, and is overall a very supportive father to her. Her mother, however, is homophobic. Emma hoped that seeing her mother would give the two of them a chance to fix their relationship, but instead, her mother not only tells Emma that she has remarried, but also drops her off at Camp Mapplewood rather than bringing her along on their honeymoon and spending more time with her

Initially, Emma does everything she can to try and get herself kicked out of the camp, but it doesn't work, and over time, she develops a friendship and eventual relationship with one of the camp counselors - Vivian. Vivian helps Emma deal with what she feels while being at camp (examples include checking on her and helping her through a panic attack) and stands up for Emma when she meets Emma's mom towards the end of the book.

I didn't like Lauren's actions in the story or her as a character in general, but that aside, I thought that this book was pretty good. I like how Vivian was there for Emma throughout the story, and how the book ended on a pretty positive note.

Reading Night Owls and Summer Skies was definitely an enjoyable read for me. With a haters to lovers trope, and a love rival present, it was fun reading this book.

The book starts off with Emma Lane, our 17 year old protagonist, being reluctantly dropped off by her dad, at her mom's place. Even before her parent's divorce, Emma had been a reclusive kid, and after a horrifying experience that caused her PTSD and depression, she has become even more avoidant of her mother. Not to mention, her mother still hasn't come to accept Emma's sexuality and thinks that she'll get over her sexuality once she gets a boyfriend.

After her father drops her off, Emma's mom suddenly announces that they are going on an oversees trip for two weeks and a car comes to take them. Soon Emma realizes that the driver is actually her mom's new husband and they are actually planning to take Emma to Camp Mapplewood for 8 weeks - the place that caused Emma's trauma as a child. Her phone is taken away at the entrance of the camp and unable to even contact her father, she is sent off to the camp by her mom.

Emma's plan is to steal her phone back and deliberately get caught by the camp counselors so that she can be thrown out of this place. Camp Mapplewood is owned by the Blacks and there she comes across Gwen Black, the youngest Black who is attending the camp as well. She takes a liking to Gwen only, but when she sees that her other cabinmates bully Gwen, under the leadership of Lauren, just because of a camp counselor position, Emma takes it upon herself to protect Gwen at all cost. Meanwhile, when Emma goes to steal her phone, she gets caught by Vivian Black, her cabin counselor, and also Gwen's sister. But Vivian is reluctant to kick Emma out of the camp and instead insists that staying in the camp would do her good.

Slowly, Emma comes to accept her life in the camp, but there still exists one problem. Lauren. The root cause of her trauma and Gwen's constant bullying. A number of events lead Emma to discover her feelings and the feelings of her cabinmates and Vivian as well.

I loved the characters. The whole Black family is awesome. I especially loved Gwen and Vivian's brother Walter. That dude is funny and cool. And Emma's character being a full of sarcasm makes her and Walter's interactions extra fun to read. I also loved Gwen's character. She's such a joyful and positive character. Vivian kind of didn't make a good impression on me though. But I loved how both Emma and Vivian helped make significant differences in each other's lives.

While on one hand Emma's mother couldn't accept her daughter's sexuality, Vivian's family have all their support to her. Emma's dad is one character that made my heart really happy. It gave me a sense of pleasure reading about Emma and her dad's interaction.

I won't give out much details, but there's a lot of love rivalry and yearning in this book. So it gets extra points from me.

Can we first talk about the cover of this book! It is absolutely stunning and it is definitely a big choice in making me pick this book to read!
Than I loved the writing style, it is very fun and easy to read! I also really enjoyed the storyline. I love Emma as a character and to see how much she grows throughout the book. The book really made me feel like I was at summercamp too, and I loved that.
It is definitely a fun and lovable summer read!

This was a cute and fast read. I love camp books and considering this one is also queer, I was very excited to read it. First, the description of the camp was great and there was good worldbuilding. I felt like I was really there! However, I never felt a strong connection with the main character. And, although the descriptions were good, the dialogue felt forced. I also would have liked to see more of the backstory shown rather than told. Overall, this was a good book and is an easy read. I liked the love story and the setting. I'd recommend this as a good book for pre-teens and teens.

I absolutely loved this book and it’s one of my new favourite books! I loved the will they won’t they and I’m glad it had a happy ending. One reviewer didn’t like the “still gay, mom. i suppose the correct term would be lesbian, but gay kind of sits better with me.” quote but I actually resonate with this and I appreciate the representation!
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Emma and her mom have a rocky relationship (due to her mom’s heterosexism and self-absorption), and Emma lives with her dad most of the year. She has a court-ordered summer visitation with her mom, but things do not go as planned. Her mom unexpectedly drops her off at summer camp within a few hours of her arrival, knowing full well that an incident at this camp caused trauma for Emma several years prior. Since Emma doesn’t want to stay, she tries immediately to get kicked out of camp, but her efforts are futile.

What I liked:

1. Emma is secure in her sexual orientation and has been out for five years.
2. Emma has a dad who accepts her as she is and has gotten her help for her depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
3. The adults at camp do not give up on Emma.
4. The camp director looks for reasons behind behaviors.

What I didn’t like:

1. I felt as though I didn’t know any character well, and some were one-dimensional.
2. Some of the things they said and did seemed to stretch credulity. For instance, Emma’s dad knows she will be staying with a self-absorbed, heterosexist mom, and doesn’t check up on her at all. He doesn’t know she’s at camp until she calls him over a month later. If he is as loving as he’s been portrayed, this behavior is inconsistent.
3. Given the power differential, Emma’s relationship with her eventual girlfriend is discomforting, even though their age is just a few years apart. The ways in which her girlfriend’s family seem so set on pushing the relationship to happen also is discomforting.
4. The writing and plot seem disjointed, something that other reviewers have noted.

I think that this is a book that some teens will enjoy, especially those who love summer camp stories.

The summer before Emma Lane's eighteenth birthday is the last summer she will have to return to York Beach, Maine for the court ordered two months of visitation with her mother.  Since Emma came out as gay at the age of twelve, her mother has been unaccepting of her sexuality, distant and divorced her father.  Now, Emma returns to York Beach only to be dumped at Camp Maplewood where she suffered a traumatic episode several years before throwing Emma into a depression complete with PTSD while her mother jet sets around the world with her new husband.  Emma immediately sets out to get herself thrown out of camp by breaking into the shed holding the camper's phones only to be thwarted at every attempt by counselor Vivian Black. As Emma deals with her worst fears at camp, she makes a friend in chipper, outgoing Gwen Black and a passion for cooking with Julie Black, the camp cook. Each time Emma even thinks about doing something to get herself kicked out, Vivian seems to be a step ahead, helping Emma through her fears and getting to know her well, maybe even more.

Night Owls and Summer Skies is a perfect summer romance.  I loved that Emma's character was already secure in her sexuality and that finding her sexuality was not the main point of the book, this was simply a romance.  Emma's character also had deeper issues such as her depression and PTSD which still affect her, but don't define her.  The writing brought me into Emma's head and at times I felt like I was having a panic attack along with her.  Emma's growth at camp was amazing to read through.  From dealing with bullies, making friends, finding a hobby she enjoys and learning how to trust again along with slowly recovering from her trauma from years before.  Emma and Vivian's relationship felt natural and unhurried as they simply fell into one another.  I did find it a little weird that they were counselor and camper, although they were only one year apart in age.  I do wish there was some growth for Emma's mother along with some of the other campers; however, it is Emma's story.  Overall, a fun summer romance.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

DNF at 60%, I really tried to get into this. The premise is awesome, FF romance at summer camp um yes please! But I just found the writing really hard to connect with. I also found the character actions didn't make a lot of sense. Starting right from the beginning with the main character's mother insisting that her daughter come stay with her for the summer and then taking off on a honeymoon and sending her daughter (with severe anxiety and depression and a phobia of camp) to summer camp. But nothing any of the characters did made any sense.

4.0

Emma Lane is stuck.
Stuck spending the summer with her ego-centric mother who is clearly in denial of Emma's sexuality.
Stuck friendless with the exception of Jesse, a childhood pseudo friend from camp and pen pal.
Stuck with PTSD from an experience from camp years ago, leaving her with depression.

That is until her mother drops her off at aforementioned Camp Mapplewood and everything changes.

The Good:
You will fall in love with the Black family, that I can promise. Every member of this family is weaved into the story, saturated in the operation of this camp. I found each more enjoyable then the last as they wove their way into Emma's life. Talk about a meet cute, this may be the best I've read. Vivian Black is iconic. She was crafted so perfectly by Sullivan that I wonder if she really is out there- waiting with a sarcastic, yet charming, comment.

This book isn't plagued by some of the other 'summer read' generalizations, there isn't an instant romance (think more slow burn) or a rushed, overly intimate scene. For as believable as the romance was the friendship between Emma and Gwen Black was even more so. Gwen is a great character (major Alice Cullen Vibes) who I could see dancing around camp free-spirited and nature loving.

This book is about healing, overcoming your worst fears and doing it while keeping your own personality. I appreciated how Emma's sense of sarcasm didn't waver- even as she overcame her fear of the woods. Just because you champion a change in self doesn't mean you're a different person.

The Bad:
The writing became confusing at certain points, a better flow would of garnered a 5.0 from me. Some word choices seemed overdone to avoid seeming simplistic. I would of liked to explore Vivian's college life in the last couple of chapters rather then Emma's as we spent so much time with her we knew enough.

The Eh:
Jessie. Jessie in total. I feel like the same effect could of been achieved had Emma just had a journal that Lauren stole or if Jessie was a better fleshed out character.

Recommendation:
A must to add to your summer shelf!

A lot of potential, but the writing falls short to the predictable plot. Lot of typical character archetypes. I really loved the LGBTQIA+ aspect of this novel, however -- this really heightened this for me. Overall it's very one-dimensional, however there's a lot here for the writer to work this. This book feels like a first draft. This could've been so much better.

This pains me because I wanted to like this but I ended up feeling so disconnected from the story that halfway through I could not give you a single opinion on literally anything that happened. I started asking myself questions about if I liked the plot, the writing and the characters and all I could think was ??? which is a major problem. And this major problem wasn't rectified by the end because even right before I started writing a review I could barely think of any concrete opinion except for ??? so I had to sit on it for a while. And then sit some more. Just so that I could have anything to say.

That should be enough to explain that the writing and the plot were completely disconnected and I don't think it was done very well. The writing was okay and the idea had potential but overall it wasn't executed very well. I had a lot of problems with the dialogue and how childish the characters came off, particularly Walter, and because of that I couldn't really connect with them. I didn't hate them but I also didn't like them so it really became a chore to finish.

I also had problems with the basic premise of this plot. Emma is sent to live with her bigoted mother over the summer, which she is dreading, only for her to find out when she gets there that her mother is shipping her off to camp so she can go on a cruise with her new husband. Emma resents this and is terrified because she had a bad experience in the woods that left her with anxiety and PTSD. Because of this, she starts acting out and doing things to get herself kicked out which are ignored by her camp counselor (her love interest in the end) because she thinks the camp will be good for her. She also doesn't want to turn her in because that's what Emma wants her to do and for some reason she doesn't want to give in to that. Vivian, the camp counselor, does not know that Emma is terrified of camping and the woods so she can't necessarily be at fault here but what I don't understand is why Emma doesn't explain to the camp director that her mother forced her to go against her will, that she has a big fear of camping and wants to call her father WHO DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WAS DROPPED OFF AT CAMP AT THIS POINT.

I know a major theme of this book is camp being a place to find who you are and move past your problems but I can't believe that a camp would hold her prisoner and force her to stay against her will. It was more than her just not wanting to be at camp, she had valid reasons for not wanting to be there and a very easy way of getting out of it. If she would've just opened her mouth and demanded she call her father this would have been immediately fixed. Her father doesn't even find out for several WEEKS that she's even at this camp and that her mother ditched her there. So the fact that the first third of the book is spent on Emma doing whatever she can to get kicked out is illogical to me because they can't force her to be there. If she would have gone to the director, explained what was going on and that she wanted to call her father, this would have been handled in two seconds.

And I just do not understand why this completely illogical premise is the basis for the plot when there are ways to work around that. It was kind of annoying and made me hate Emma in the beginning because everything she did came off as childish and frustrating.

Besides this glaring plot hole, I had another major issue with this story. In the author's note Rebecca Sullivan explained she wanted to write characters that represent you and are at the forefront of the plot without being sidelined or killed off. And I respect that. So why she wrote a story with a character who says "Still gay, Mom. I suppose the correct term would be lesbian but gay sits better with me." I don't really understand. Lesbian is often treated as a dirty word and we so rarely get characters that flat out identify as one so this part of the story really didn't sit right with me. There's nothing wrong with wanting to identify as gay, but this is a fictional character and hearing her say she's a lesbian and claiming that label - especially because she recognizes it fits her - would have been important but instead she acts completely indifferent to it. I know that's a minor thing but it just made me feel kind of icky.

The major issue I had was with Lauren. Let's be real, she fits the predatory lesbian stereotype to a T. That's what she's meant to do. She's a bully, she doesn't respect boundaries, she invades personal space and sexually harasses Emma. And then we find out she did the exact same thing to Vivian last year which makes her a repeat offender. The fact that nothing was done about this is gross and doesn't make sense especially considering Vivian is the daughter of the camp director.

Her behavior is not treated as okay and obviously Lauren is supposed to be the villain of the story but it's so unnecessary it drives me insane. What I don't understand is why the author, who admitted she wanted to write a story with good queer rep, would make the villain a character who falls into a toxic lesbian stereotype that is often portrayed in media and that lesbians have been saying for years is gross and predatory when she wanted to give us good reputation that we could see ourselves in. It's actually kind of infuriating. I know that it's said that Lauren has issues at home but those issues at home do not excuse her behavior and I don't know why therapy wasn't immediately suggested considering everyone knows she has issues at home.

Despite those things mentioned above, everything else about the story is just very meh. There's nothing I particularly liked about anything that happened. That mostly stems from how disconnected from everything I was but the reason I was so disconnected from this is because of how it was written.

I don't necessarily want to deter people from reading this because I think there's a lot of people who could enjoy this. It just was not for me and that sucks because I really wanted it to be.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the book for an honest review. (Contains spoilers but not quite at the same time)

If you have never read books from Watpad then you may find the structure unpolished compared to other books. The layout can be very off putting and spoil the flow of the book.

I really wanted to like this book from the description to the beautiful art work of the front cover but unfortunately there was just to many things I couldn't forgive. The matturity level of how the characters acted was one of the main reasons and as much as I wanted to dismiss it I couldn't.

Our main character Jessie is a 17 year old lesbian who comes across more like a 14 year old. As a reader you find out early in the books she suffers with depression, anxiety and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Due to all her mental health conditions I was going to accept her why she may but a bit more naive or immature to things due to how they have may impacted her. Unfortunately alot of the main characters held the same immaturity. It may be me and my friends but when we was 17 we was very mature.

In regards to her mental health conditions, personally I don's think they was handle very well or the author didn't have a full understanding of them. If you had ten people in a room with all the same illnesses each person my suffer different. With that in mind I still feel that Jessie's were over come with ease. I just felt being her main issues to resolved so quickly was unbelievable.

The romance with Jessie and Vivian seemed rushed. There was just no build up or spark. The author could of done so much with this because there was elements in the story to make something beautiful blossom between them. Even though this is a youndadult book , so much more could of happened.

One of the other characters Lauren come across as a bully and seedy at times. Her actions was borderline sexual harassment. Every time the character was mentioned or what she did made me wince.

Sometimes I couldn't keep along with the conversation. It was up and down in places and I felt like certain things just didn't go with the paragraph or the conversation felt like it completely changed. It made me read back thinking I may have missed something.

I rated the book two stars because I could see the vision of the story the author had in mind but it just didn't land. I will read another one of there books in hopes they have taken on everyone's reviews. Taking parts from the negatives and positives to mould and grow as a writer.

This review has already been posted to good reads and facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LGBT-Books-103620261428821/?view_public_for=103620261428821

Okay. Where do I begin? Thank you to Netgalley, Rebecca, and Wattpad for an advance copy of this book.

Wattpad is notoriously hit or miss with their published works. This is a miss. Was it ever edited? Did anyone else review it before printing it up? There's some potential here but it's like Wattpad Pub just took the rough draft of the rough draft of the first draft and just called it a day.

The good: diverse main character (LGBTQ), explores a relationship with an unaccepting parent, old friendships, rivalries/frenemies, parent relationships (yes, a YA novel with parents who are actually present!), and the plot had potential.

The bad: the character development, the execution of the plot, the characters were so bland that I kept getting them all confused, the romance was awful to the point that it took me 3/4 of the book to figure out who the love interest was supposed to be (I was wondering if it was a queer Harem for awhile there, seriously), the writing was repetitive, and that may be it.

Seriously, a queer summer camp novel about a supportive family while also putting an unsupportive parent in their place could've been such a great read, but yeah, unfortunately this one wasn't it.