The Secret Summer Promise by Keah Brown Review

* This review is spoiler-free *

3/5 ⭐

Tropes

➮ Best friends to lovers

➮ Queer bipoc disabled MC

➮ Summertime

➮ Lesbian relationship

Synopsis

Andrea is a teenager dealing with cerebral palsy, coming to terms with her LGBTQ+ identity, and realizing she has feelings for her best friend. Andrea and her best friend Hailee are hoping to cross off everything on their Best Summer Ever list. As Andrea navigates summertime adventures with her ever-growing feelings, she struggles to maintain balance.

LGBTQ+ Representation

5/5 🌈

This is by far the best LGBTQ+ representation among the books I have read this year. The main character Andrea identifies as bisexual. Her crush Hailee identifies as lesbian. Both of them go through the process of coming out and coming to terms with how their lives will change because of coming out. In addition, another one of Andrea's friends is a trans guy and serves as an example of someone out and proud. If I remember correctly, there is also an additional friend of Andrea's who has lesbian parents. I highly appreciate the varied representation this story provides. It does well at portraying the fears young people experience when they are discovering their sexuality. I do wish there was at least a little representation of people whose coming out stories are not perfect. 

My Thoughts

I listened to this book as an audiobook and admittedly, that may have diminished my experience. Personally, I found the voice used for Hailee to be quite grating and honestly sound like Hailee has been a long-time chain smoker despite being in high school. It really diminished from my ability to relax and take in the story because I was so distracted by her voice. 

Other than that, I find the drama and conflict to be very middle school and immature. Instead of a story about high schoolers, it feels like rising seventh graders. Instead of having the mind to talk things out or at least use the resources they have, it is just a lot of back and forth. 

I feel a bit bad given this is my first rather harsh review of a book. I wish I enjoyed the experience much more than I actually enjoyed it. This book got as high of a review as it got because I do not like to tank reviews for books with excellent representation if it was simply not my favorite. If not for the representation this would easily be a 2.5 stars. If the story were more unique and realistic for the target audience it would've been a much better reading experience. 

If you can get past the immature-feeling drama and overall juvenile feel, I recommend supporting a queer bipoc author who provides excellent representation. I admire Brown's accomplishment of getting more inclusive stories out into the world. I would consider this book better suited to a middle-grade audience than a young adult audience.