The Summer of Skinny Dipping Review

Mia Gordon is sixteen years old and dealing with the heartache of her first boyfriend breaking up with her. She’s on her way to her aunt and uncle’s summer house in the Hamptons with her family for the summer, hoping that hanging out with her cousin Corinne will help take her mind off her troubles.

But when Mia arrives Corinne has other plans. She’s become very stuck up and plans to spend her summer with her best friend rather then her cousin. This leaves Mia all alone feeling like a third wheel and eventually leads to her meeting a boy named Simon. Simon doesn’t make Mia’s heart skip, give her sweaty palms or give her that he’s the one feeling. But he’s a nice guy and she enjoys spending time with him, besides she doesn’t want another boyfriend, that’s the last thing she wants.

Simon tries his best to win Mia’s attention and this leads to a romance that is so sweet and heartfelt that it becomes a summer that Mia will never forget.

The Summer of Skinny Dipping is new author Amanda Howells' debut YA novel. From the moment I saw the book cover, I had a feeling this was going to be a great book. I love stories about teenage romance and having the story set at the beach only made it even more romantic. The writing is so beautiful that I had to reread many passages out loud because I loved it so much. The prologue to the story gives you a taste of what I mean. Tell me this doesn’t take your breath away!

There are summers you’ll always remember and summers you’ve forgotten even before they’re through. It’s never an in –between season. Whole months can slip by, and you don’t know what you did or where you were. June, July, August, they’re all the same

This is the other kind.

Long after that summer ended, I stayed stuck inside it, reliving that night, over and over, and everything that led up to it. Sometimes I still wake up shivering in the early hours of the morning, drowning in dreams of being out there in the ocean, of looking up at the moon and feeling as invisible and free as a fish.

I know I am different, and yet also, in a way, I’m still the same, only more myself now, because that’s what happens when your life changes so completely. It takes pieces of you that you kept deeply hidden, even from yourself, and forces them to the surface like splinters working their way out of your skin.

But I’m jumping ahead, and to tell the story right, I have to go back to the very beginning. To a place called Indigo Beach. To a boy with pale skin that glowed against the dark waves. To the start of something neither of us could have predicted, and which would mark us forever, making everything that came after and before seem like it belonged to another life.

My name is Mia Gordon: I was sixteen years old, and I remember everything.

Upon finishing this book I ran to the bookstore hoping that Amanda Howell was just a pen name and that I could find more books by this author. Unfortunately, there aren’t anymore books yet, but if there were I would have bought them all immediately.

The Summer of Skinny Dipping is the perfect book to read on the beach this summer. The characters were vibrant and realistic, the romance was so touching, and overall this book was a solid A+ and I can not wait for more books by Howell!

Find The Summer of Skinny Dipping on Amazon.com or at Barnes and Noble at the attached links.