I am so excited today to be participating in the Summer Days and Summer Nights Blog Tour! The tour takes place between May 10, 2016 – May 24, 2016 so there’s plenty of love going around as we put the spotlight on the latest collection of short love stories edited by the lovely, Stephanie Perkins. Be sure to follow Stephanie on Twitter for all the latest on Summer Days and Summer Nights!
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories
Edited By Stephanie Perkins
Release Date: May 17, 2016
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Anthology
ISBN: 9781250079121|
Source: Received E-ARC from Publisher
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Internationally bestselling author Stephanie Perkins brought together some of her closest friends and fellow bestselling young adult authors for the holiday anthology My True Love Gave to Me that a starred Publisher’s Weekly called “a rare holiday treat” and Romantic Times claimed “this is what all anthologies should aspire to be”. Now, she’s doing it again with SUMMER DAY AND SUMMER NIGHTS: Twelve Love Stories, another anthology filled with twelve new stories from a superstar lineup of young adult authors. Already receiving rave reviews, this anthology is the perfect beach companion for those long, hazy summer days.
Featuring twelve brand new short stories from:
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss, My True Love Gave To Me)
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows, The Grisha Trilogy)
Nina LaCour (Everything Leads to You, You Know Me Well)
Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)
Francesca Lia Block (Love in the Time of Global Warming)
Tim Federle (The Great American Whatever)
Veronica Roth (The Divergent Trilogy)
Jon Skovron (Misfits, Man Made Boy)
Brandy Colbert (Pointe)
Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments Series)
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Falling in Love, The Geography of You and Me)
Lev Grossman (The Magicians Trilogy)
SUMMER DAY AND SUMMER NIGHTS, written by twelve bestselling young adult writers and edited by the international bestselling Stephanie Perkins, will have you dreaming of sunset strolls by the lake. So set out your beach chair and grab your sunglasses. You have twelve reasons this summer to soak up the sun and fall in love.
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Summer Days and Summer Nights is a great follow up to the winter short story collection, My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins.
What I love about this collection is that it’s not full of stories that are romantic from page one. No, we don’t jump into warm stories about love birds. Stories that will give you butterflies in each and every line and not much else. Boring. No.
We dive into intimate, messy love stories about crushes and distance, chances and resistance. There’s romantic love, there’s love among friends. Strangers. There’s loss. There’s depth, there are stakes in all of the above. We dive into a pool of diversity, of equal love, of boundless love in circumstances that are like night and day. There’s a really great range here in not just f/m, f/f, and m/m romances but backgrounds, ability, and class as well. It’s well rounded. It’s realistic – even in the few stories that aren’t exactly contemporary.
My top five short stories were “Last Stand at the Cinegor” by Libba Bray (it gave me a Charmed vibe. Anyone else?) which was dark and thrilling and fun, “Inertia” by Veronica Roth which was more speculative and therefore, more up my alley, and “Love is the Last Resort” by Jon Skovron which had such a fun voice, tone, writing style, such exciting characters and really great pacing. I wasn’t familiar with Jon Skovron before this so I’m looking forward to checking out his previous work now. Plus “A Thousand Ways This Could All Go Wrong” by Jennifer Smith which was just so warm and lovely and exemplifies the perfect summer romance read and “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” by Lev Grossman which fans of Groundhog Day will enjoy.
And while I was familiar with Francesca Lia Block, I still have not read any of her books but I love her writing style displayed in her short story, “Sick Pleasures,” so it seems I must move her books up my TBR list.
Along with the above, there is much to love about this anthology. Leigh Bardugo’s classic attention to detail and imagery in “Head, Scaled, Tongue, Tail.” This is the first short story of the anthology and the absolute perfect way to start this collection off. Cassandra Clare’s “Brand New Attraction” for those who don’t really consider themselves romantics and have found themselves with a copy of this book, this one’s light on the romance and is perfect for you. There’s something for everyone to appreciate here, no matter where you are on the spectrum of romance. Love for all on any summer day or night. So put this in your beach bag this summer and enjoy!
My Favorite Summer Days And Summer Nights Short Story Titles:
“In Ninety Minutes, Turn North” by Stephanie Perkins
“Souvenirs” by Tim Federle
“Love is the Last Resort” by Jon Skovron
“Brand New Attraction” by Cassandra Clare
“A Thousand Ways This Could All Go Wrong” by Jennifer Smith
About the Editor
Stephanie Perkins has always worked with books—first as a bookseller, then as a librarian, and now as a novelist. She’s the author of the international bestsellers Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door, as well as Isla and the Happily Ever After. My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories is her first anthology. Stephanie and her husband live in the mountains of North Carolina.
Thank you, St. Martin’s Griffin for the blog tour invite! I had a blast!