The teenagers and their parents are realistically portrayed, the girls with their foolishness and impulsiveness, their sincerity and innocence, and the parents as contrasts, one pair overly-protective and another pair at wits’ end, sailing along in a haze of not wanting to know and not daring to find out the truth about their daughter. The plot of the book is also very real and compelling: one year after a shattering car accident, best friends Anna and Frankie are out to have the best summer of their lives. Their  plans twist out of control, derailed by the past and by their individual responses to what they lost in that car accident. The girls take a big leap into adulthood when they finally recognize that they are “lucky — lucky to be alive” and that “nothing every really goes away, it just changes into something beautiful.”

This is a great book for teenagers and parents to share — it was engrossing, moving, and profound — and there are scenes of drinking, sneaking out at night, and teenage sexuality that could open up some good discussions between the generations.  There is even a loss-of-virginity build-up and realization that is presented without fuss or overkill.  It includes a wonderful description of the first awakening of sexual feelings (“I feel things that I’ve never felt, in places I didn’t know existed, like a hundred hungry little flowers waking up and blooming in the sun after a long, harsh winter” ) and completes itself without dramatics: like the rest of the book, the sex is realistic and straightforward, and shaded only slightly — and in the best way — by the rosy optimism of youth.

Optimism, manifested by physical or mental desire for connection, is the driving force behind survival, and through her connections with both her past and her present, Anna realizes her ability to go on living after suffering so much.  She will continue to thrive — taking her best friend along  — long after their 20 Boy Summer.