Book 789: Summer Lessons (Winter Ball #2) – Amy Lane

After finishing Wolf Hall, I knew I was going to need a bit of a breather and where else to turn but the next book in a romance series I’d already started and the library just happened to have?

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first one, it had a lot more humor, but it also brought to light a few more things about Lane’s writing setting that I’m not so sure I’m a fan of. There’s just one aspect of these books that has forced me out of the story at key plot points and that is NEVER a good sign.

Generally, I’m a big fan of a naïve boyfriend/friend first/love story, maybe it’s the learning or the teaching, but for the most part they generally work. However, for some reason, Lane has just slightly missed the mark in this book and in the first of the series, Winter Ball. I’ve realized the longer I’ve been way from the “small city” that I grew up in that there are even smaller towns out there, but it’s almost like the men (often younger) in these books just don’t have access to the internet or have any curiosity or drive what-so-ever. And she plays it off with this,

When you don’t got that feeling, like you can screw up and it’ll be okay, you stay a kid a lot longer, at least in your head. Because you don’t know how to do anything else. Nobody showed you how. (68)

But that’s only true to a certain extent. I mean there’s oblivious, but then there’s willfully obtuse. I mean come on, there are YA novels that handle coming out and or hooking up and or just figuring out your identity better than this without even trying! I mean it’s pretty basic, but who knows maybe it’s intentional? Like I said, it’s just enough to pull me out of the story occasionally and that’s never a good sign.

For the most part, the above deals with Terry, the young protagonist trying to get out from his verbally and financially abusive mother. I much preferred the other protagonist, Mason, a neurodiverse executive who made a couple of passes at Skip in the first of the series. When it comes to Mason, and to a lesser extent his brother, not only do you get gloriously funny scenes like the one that opens the novel, you get  him growing as a person and a character:

All things considered, he was starting to wonder if he’d been hanging out with the wrong people his entire life. Either way, he was sort of glad he’d discovered the right people now. (106)

and this is the older character who does mature and show Terry what it means to truly want to be with someone even though it breaks his own heart in the process. I mean come on! And the minor characters made the novel this time. Mason’s Executive Assistant wins for best minor character hands down, but we do hear from any of the other minor characters and get gems like this:

‘Are you kidding me?’ he hissed, gesturing vaguely down the stairs. ‘I’ve got stock boys groping my ass randomly and you have to bring home Hot Neighbor? For what? So I can tell him no and he can go find a stock boy?’
‘Make sure it’s the stock boy from the meat department,’ Skip said laconically. ‘That would kill two gays with one bone.’
Richie doubled over laughing and Mason sputtered.
And then managed a chuckle.
‘You could always introduce him to Hot Hugh,’ Richie said helpfully.
‘So what? I could have Hot Hugh and Smooth Stuart? It sounds like a radio news show.’
‘Don’t forget Gorgeous George,’ Dane said, scampering up the stairs like a mutant lemur. ‘’Cause I invited him too.’
Mason stared at him blankly. ‘You used my phone?’
‘Duh. Anyway, he’s downstairs, helping with the ice chest. And Carpenter invited Hot Hugh, so you can’t blame me for him.’
And then all the cars wrecked inside Mason’s brain and he stood there gaping. ‘Why?’ he said after a moment. ‘Why would you do this? I thought you all loved me.’ (210)

I had to finish reading this scene in the bathroom because I was laughing so hard and I didn’t want to wake Tim up. It was pure comedy and Mason’s reactions and inability to handle it, but somehow be successful after Terry showed up with a “friend” to his house party was perfectly written.

I’m not sure about the next book in the series, Fall Through Spring, but only because if focuses on Dane and Clay and they were a big part of this story too. I wish Lane would’ve gone down the any other number of avenues she introduced, but she didn’t. I will read it though because I already have a copy from the library and it’s a good buffer after my second Booker Prize winning novel read of the year!

Recommendation: I enjoyed this one more than Winter Ball, but feel that the “realness” of the series still has some issues. You can only take naivete so far. I mean at what point does it become obstinate refusal to grow up or learn about something? Even though I’m not necessarily looking forward to the final book in the series, Fall Through Spring, maybe it won’t be as bad as I think it is because at least I know the characters already and the things that are bothering me about the series probably won’t be as in your face in that installment.

Opening Line: “MOM! You shouldn’t let him run around naked like that!”

Closing Line: “You learned more that way.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Summer Lessons
“Mason remembered everything. Sometimes his brain was so busy remembering things that he forgot that words, meaning, and people’s reactions all had a sort of car wreck whenever he opened his mouth.” (1)

“‘That is too bad, sir. I would very much like to see you happily matched.’
‘Have we been watching Pride and Prejudice again, Mrs. Bradford?’
‘Sense and Sensibility, sir. It’s my husband’s favorite. Something about when the eldest Miss Dashwood bursts into tears just melts his crotchety old heart.’
‘As it should,’ he’d replied. She’d turned to leave, the military precision of her heel pivot showing twelve years in the Air Force before she’d married, opted out, and stayed home to raise two sons.” (38)

“It’s always a lot easier if you assume the world is wrong and you’re right. If you assume the other way around, we may as well pray for the earth to swallow us up because we’re not doing jackshit right!” (45)

“Be quiet and accept Jefferson for who he was and the limitations in his life, and maybe, week by week, show him how to reach for more.” (55)

“The barrier wasn’t money itself, like most people thought. It was resources—it was the belief that the world out there could help you instead of just kick you in the teeth.” (74)

“Yeah. Something that makes you feel good when it’s working. That doesn’t make you afraid it’s going to get yanked away because you say or do the wrong thing once or even twice. It’s a relationship with a do-over clause.” (77)

“They’d been texting desultorily that week, and Mason was getting disheartened.” (106)

“It hadn’t been until that trip to the psych ward, Dane lying in a fetal curl, sobbing about how he’d ruined his life by refusing a movie invitation, that it had hit Mason—and their parents: this was how Dane’s brain worked.
The blessing was Dane—happy, joyous, brilliant, enthusiastic Dane.
The drawback was Dane obsessing over the smallest perceived imperfection until he lost his ability to function.” (115)

“He was starting to learn that you didn’t really know what it meant unless you felt the broken glass of worry that went with it.” (146)

“‘Is it really a choice?’ Mason asked, looking at him with meaning. ‘Because I used to think so. I’d meet a guy, date a guy, take the relationship in increments. But this didn’t feel like I chose it. It felt like . . . like I’d been waiting for this one person to wander into my life and make me feel good. And once he showed up, there was no choice at all.'” (157)

“‘Because you know what you have to do,’ Skip said, shrugging. ‘You don’t have a choice. Whatever your person needs, you have to be there. ̓Cause he’s—yes, he, Clay, you’re fooling fuckin’ nobody—the one person who makes you happy. If you can do the thing, whatever the thing is, to return the favor, that’s your job, right?'” (158)

“‘If you say “It is what it is’ I’ll vomit,”‘ Skip muttered. ‘’Cause what it is sucks. It’s not “what it is”—it’s “a situation ripe for improvement.”‘” (159)

“‘I don’t want anybody,’ Mason said, knowing he sounded plaintive but unable to change it. ‘I want you. When you want me back like that, let me know.'” (167)

“‘But no—we want you to leave so we can watch the Star Wars trilogy from beginning to end. Not your favorite, I know.’
Star Trek, yes. Star Wars, not so much.
‘Heathens,’ Mason grunted.” (219)

“Skipper had been right—he really had found his people, and knowing who his people were made it so much easier not to feel like an asshole in front of everybody else.” (221)