Holly Cardamone won the 2024 Hawkeye Press Manuscript Development award for her novel, Summer, In Between. Described as a kind of modern mash-up of Aussie teenage classics, Looking for Alibrandi and Puberty Blues, Summer, In Between follows seventeen-year-old Cat Kelty, an ambitious and slightly spiky Italian-Australian girl who lives in a coastal holiday town.
Cat is stressed about the impending start of Year Twelve, and as the story opens on New Year’s Day, things are about to get a whole lot worse. While other teens her age are hanging out at the beach or sleeping off a big night, Cat is laser-focussed on her goals for the year ahead.
All her careful planning of how she’s going to handle the big year is thrown into chaos when she learns her Nonna is going to be moving in with them, and her builder father is going to be converting part of the house into a literal Granny flat. On top of this, he has enlisted the help of a local chippie, Paul Lightwood.
Paul, a few years older than Cat, is part of a gang of local boys who hang around the best surf beaches. They are uncouth, a little wild, and some of them – including Paul – are incredibly attractive. While Cat spends much of the novel referring to these boys as the Neanderthals (with Paul as their king), she also calls him a ‘literal surfer god’ on more than one occasion. In turn, these surfers and the girls they hang out with call Cat a ‘SUB’ – or, Stuck Up Bitch – because she goes to a nearby private school.
Cat has developed a degree of defensiveness towards Paul and his friends over the years, thinking that they all dislike her. She perhaps doesn’t realise that she in turn is being judgemental, and she doesn’t actually know much about them at all. In fact, in many of the interactions we see between Cat and the surfers, she radiates condescension towards anyone who is not on track to go to university – despite the fact that her own father is a well-known tradesperson about town.
So when Paul begins to show an interest in Cat, she is suspicious but not completely uninterested. In fact, despite her paranoia that Paul is playing some sort of game, they become a couple quickly and with little resistance. Paul is kind-hearted and good with parents, little brothers and Nonnas, and he seems incredibly supportive of Cat’s big ambitions, even if they do threaten to take her away from Batter’s Cove. Once coupled up, however, it’s not all smooth sailing, and the central question of the book becomes, can these two young people overcome their differences and turn their summer fling into something more.
Both Cat and Paul’s insecurities about whether or not they are a good match see them constantly doubting each other, fighting, and having to convince each other that they are all in. For readers who aren’t comfortable in the YA space, this tumult might be a little frustrating, as they do seem to have the same conversation again and again – and yet it all feels incredibly accurate somehow.
As the pair re-hash their worries, it feels as if the book is building to a big twist reveal – is perfect Paul hiding something huge? In fact, the book is building to something a little more sweet; the question of whether or not the couple will ever feel comfortable enough in their own skins to feel as if their love is secure.
At times, I found the dialogue in this novel a little much, with many characters saying “freakin'” a lot (instead of swearing) and using lots of terms of endearment that didn’t quite feel natural. However, I loved the relationship developed between Cat and her parents, who seem to be real people with their own interests and desires rather than just stand ins representing the rules and expectations of an older generation. If Cat’s parents seem to be a little too permissive of her dating a 20-year old, perhaps this balances out how intense Cat is. She doesn’t need a parent telling her to pull her head in; but, rather ones who will tell her it is okay to live a little and take safe risks sometimes.
I would have liked to have seen the themes about informed consent and the policing of women’s bodies developed a little more, as Cardamone hints at there being more to the story behind Cat’s friendship fallout with local mean girl, Isabel. Aside from a brief phone cameo by her friend Sal, and the mention of her absent friend, Em, Cat is very much alone in a sea of men and potential misogyny, and while she talks the feminist talk, with no other young women to interact with, it’s hard to tease these ideas out.
The focus of the book is on Cat’s growing closeness with Paul, and her interactions with his friends- Ant, who may or may not hold a torch for Cat, Cavey, who sees her as the girl stealing his best mate, and Steve, who she punches in the face for inappropriate behaviour at a party.
Continuing the conversation started by Puberty Blues about the way that surfy guys can treat women, the book gets close to examining what has changed and what hasn’t, but there is a sense that Cardamone is holding some of her thoughts back- perhaps in deference to the younger readership.
Summer, in Between is a sweet summer romance suitable for older teens (15+). Read it if you enjoyed books like What I Like About Me by Jenna Guillaume and Can’t Say it Went to Plan by Gabrielle Tozer.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Holly Cardamone’s Summer, in Between is out now through Hawkeye Press. Grab yourself a copy from your local bookstore HERE.
