A book about family, conquering fears, and summer. Sadly, it was absolutely not scary + I had some other things that didn’t work for me.

First up, sorry for the chaotic review. Haha, I just have some feels/opinions about this one and I am not getting them sorted, so this will have to do. XD

One of my anticipate books of 2022. Sadly, not as scary as I had hoped and it had me rolling my eyes a few times. Meet Celeste, a 12-year old girl about to go on vacation to her grandparents where she will also meet her cousins. One of her goals of that summer is swimming as she wasn’t able to learn swimming from lessons. I quite liked Celeste though at times she kind of frustrated me. She sometimes had thoughts and I would have rather see her go to people and talk instead of just doing what she did.

On a horror scale.. well maybe just hitting the 1 out of 5 for me. It was just NOT scary. Yeah, there were a few spooky moments, but nothing truly frightening. I know that this is MG, but come on, I have read some terrifying MG. Like Goosebumps or What Lives in the Woods or the fab series of You’re Invited to a Creepover. And given the blurb and the cover I had expected something SUPER scary.

I wanted to yeet that lady at the community pool so hard when she said all she did when Celeste and her grandpa went there. WTF. We are in 2022 and you still say that shit? Excuse my language, but I was just so pissed at this woman. I was proud of Celeste for speaking up, but seriously, can that lady just f off. 😐

My heart also broke for the grandparents and reading about segregation and how they wanted to swim but couldn’t, not until much later.

Who the ghost was? Knew it very early on. Still a fun idea, though I was a bit confused on why the ghost would do all these mean things to the family. I mean, why? Even later when we learn the why I was still scratching my head. There are better ways to get them over that… not doing all this stuff, making them cry and hurting them.

I had such a laugh at Owen. I am sorry Owen, do you really think that Celeste has all the time to rig up a system? Hide in your closet without you knowing? And then magically disappear without you seeing her go? That part just had me so confused.

Also I found it hilarious that Celeste was all about that Capri was being mean and I was so confused by it. Because I just didn’t see why. And then later she lists some things and I am like, wait so if someone eye rolls you? That is mean? Or if someone doesn’t want to constantly drive you to a pool? That is mean? OK… Good luck in the world with real mean people then.

All in all, there were elements I liked, like seeing Celeste learn to swim, see the family get together and do fun things, I found myself wishing for a lake house, I loved that at times it was a tad spooky. But because there were things I just didn’t enjoy + I was expecting a scary read I just cannot give it more than