That One Summer Book Review

that-one-summer-book-review

I commit myself into making reviews on the Wattpad stories adapted into movies because it’s my plan to compile them all into one post. And in all honesty, I have done it all except on one movie – This Time. This Time is a 2016 Filipino romantic drama film directed by Nuel Crisostomo Naval, starring my boyfriend, James Reid and Nadine Lustre. Yes! He is my boyfriend. He just don’t know it yet. Anyway, I haven’t watch the movie because I want to read it first! But the problem is the existence of the book.

Actually, it was a quite long story. I looked for it in the bookstore but found nothing. I said to myself that I’ll just return thinking that the book is out of stock. But sadly, after many next times, there’s no This Time! I searched for it in the internet, online shops and such. That’s when I found that the book is not yet a book. The Wattpad story is not yet published and the title is not really This Time! Shocks! I even asked National Bookstore’s Customer Care for that! That was embarrassing! But then I just reinstalled the Wattpad app on my phone and searched for its original title, That One Summer.

I read the prologue and I was surprised that it only has five chapters. Since this one’s short, I decided to read it on the spot even though it was my finals week. Now that my final exams are done, I decided to make a book review on it, although it’s not a book that we can hold, because aside from my commitment, my appreciation on it forces me to do so.

What are my initial thoughts? This is the kind of story that I want to see in Wattpad. If you think that a book having only five chapters isn’t a good read, well, think again because you might change your mind after taking That One Summer. It was well-written and everything just makes sense. I love that it’s not beating around the bush. Despite of having only a few chapters, I still felt like reading a novel because it’s already compacted with huge and important scenes. In fact, I would prefer short stories like this than long yet non-sense stories, like what a usual Wattpad story is. I’m tired of those cliche scenes, pabebe moves, exaggerated story-telling and unnecessary side stories. It’s time to improve, Wattpad authors! Be like Aly Almario.

Aside from Aril Dane and Shiela May Familaran, Aly Almario is the Wattpad author that never failed to show her professionalism when it comes to writing. I admire her stories and how natural she tells. She makes sure that her characters are as realistic as possible, and at the same time, living in the modern day, as they talk the same way as ours and use terms which are very timely.

Take Alex as an example. Alex is the best friend of Avy, the female lead character of That One Summer. Although he’s just a fictional character, I see in the comments section of Wattpad that the readers love Alex’s personality. It’s because he acts the same way as our gay friends in real life and even uses gay lingo, which is so timely these days. I also spotted words jelly, which was defined as jealous and crop lord, which refers to people who have a habit of cropping photos. I know that this is just a small thing but this made me feel that what I’m reading is existing.

Because of its effective and powerful story telling, we can’t barely notice that the story itself is actually weak. As you can see, there’s no deeper reason why Avy and Gab took a long time confessing their love for each other. It’s just plainly because they’re assuming that their crush, which is each other, don’t know that they exist. However, I find it sweet when they finally had the guts to admit that they know each other and love each other. Aside from that, my favorite part of the story is when gab thought that Avy is in love with Alex. He thought, “Gusto ba niya si Alex? Bakit si Alex pa? Alam kong lapitin ng mga babae si Alex pero ang lambot kaya kumilos ng isang iyon! Lampayatot ata! Lampayatot na ba ang tipo ni Avy?” I couldn’t stop laughing when I read that!

© wattpad.com
© wattpad.com