REVIEW: The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Title: The Summer Prince

Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication Date: March 1, 2013
Source: ARC from ARCycling (thank you!)
Rating: 4/5
Get it: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Três shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that’s sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June’s best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.

Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Três will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government’s strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.

Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.

My thoughts, feelings, and reactions

The Summer Prince was awe-inspiring, beautifully written, and imaginable from the world, to the characters, and to the overall storyline. 

Palamares Tres was a city full of life. Who knew a city shaped into a pyramid could be so fascinatingly wondrous as this one! This world that Alaya Dawn Johnson created was not lacking in lights, color, art, and culture. It was vast, seemingly vivid, and utterly captivating. In this futuristic world, there was an immense amount of advanced technology and vocabulary that I didn’t understand, but desperately tried to.  As perfect as Palamares Tres may seem, it is not without social classification, political corruption, and endless judgement. Here, women are in charge and hold high power and stature over men. Every five years a new Summer King is elected for a year, only to die a horrible death to choose a new queen. In the midst of this world there is a rivalry between wakas (people under 30) and grandes (people over 30), a rebellion between technophiles (those for more technology) and isolationists (those against more technology), and the rise of those who live in the lower class called the Verde.

Main character June Costa, was an ambitious, outgoing, and driven artist. She was passionate, a little rebellious and defiant towards the things she believed and didn’t believe in. She wanted everyone in the city to see and know her work. June wanted to be famous and be the best artist in Palamares Tres. While her ambitious nature is her strong suit, it is also her downfall. In her quest to be the best, June becomes blindsided, selfish, and extremely self-centered. However, June does more good within this novel by helping Enki by being strong willed and ready to prove herself. She becomes the person Enki knows her to be and she ends up letting go what she truly wants for something much more important. 


My favorite part of this book was not the world, not the writing, or even June. It was the Summer Prince, Enki. While June may have been the narrator of this book, Enki was the star. He was also an artist who expressed himself through his voice, actions, and his body. His presence, his performances, and the way he spoke to the crowd hypnotizes all. Enki was charismatic, beautiful, and enigmatic and he knew it. He used this to manipulate to get what he wanted and made sure his voice was heard. The best thing about Enki was his mysterious allure. He was the type of person you could spend all your time with, but never truly grasp or hold on to because Enki was too beautiful to touch, too lithe to catch, and too layered to know. The people of Palarmes Tres loved him, June’s best friend Gil, loved him, even June herself loved him. Bold, daring, rebellious and catches mere attention with a wink, Enki was a rarity I wished I could have known in reality. I loved him, I loved him, I simply loved him.

While complex and intricate of a story, The Summer Prince does have its faults. The pacing is rather slow, so slow, that things don’t truly pick up well into half of the novel. While unique and original at best, the slow pacing is coupled with a plot line that is confusing and very hard to understand, if not follow. I found myself stopping to look up words and even rereading a few pages back. This would have put me off if I wasn’t so compelled to finish and get more Enki and June. The romance in this book is unconventional and maybe even unusual. I seriously loved that sexual orientation was not an issue and with no second thought to the people. It was refreshing and made me hope that someday our world would be like this. The fate of this book was predictable in of itself, but I still found it very heartbreaking and crushing. I was moved by the bittersweetness of how everything played out. 


Overall, The Summer Prince managed to capture my heart despite all of its difficulty. I was enraptured by the story, maybe even a little obsessed.

Blog Tour: Trapped by Michael Northrop - Review + Giveaway

Hosted by the wonderful: Evie @ Bookish

I am super excited to be a part of the Trapped blog tour (thanks Evie). Be sure to check out my review and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of Trapped! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Title: Trapped
Author: Michael Northrop
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Published: February 1, 2011
Format: Paperback* 232 pages
Rating: 4/5
Get it: Amazon | B&N | IndieBound

The day the blizzard started, no one knew that it was going to keep snowing for a week. That for those in its path, it would become not just a matter of keeping warm, but of staying alive. . . .

Scotty and his friends Pete and Jason are among the last seven kids at their high school waiting to get picked up that day, and they soon realize that no one is coming for them. Still, it doesn't seem so bad to spend the night at school, especially when distractingly hot Krista and Julie are sleeping just down the hall. But then the power goes out, then the heat. The pipes freeze, and the roof shudders. As the days add up, the snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision.

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My Review

Trapped is a story about a young boy and six other students stuck at their high school during the worst storm any one has ever seen or experience. This book was all about survival, working together as a group and ultimately staying alive in the face of a catastrophe. 

Our narrator and story teller, Scotty Weams, was just a regular teenage boy in high school who had close friends, loved basketball, and got decent grades. From the beginning, Scotty had a great voice. Whatever he was talking about, I was all ears. In Trapped, he really did his part within the group. Scotty was optimistic even when things were not looking so good. He did his best to preoccupy himself and kept others company when needed. Scotty not only thought of himself, but of his mom and everyone with him. He was not selfish and was willing to do what was best for all. I thought Scotty was a cautious boy who thought things through before he did them and I thought that ultimately made him a strong character. 

The other characters in the book are pretty cool. While I didn’t get to know them on the level as I did with Scotty, I enjoyed seeing them through his eyes. I really liked how they were all different from each other but was still able to work together. Even though I doubt this experience with blur their clique lines, I think in a small way they formed some sort of bond. Among the characters I thought Jason and Pete were pretty funny and they brought the comical relief that was needed throughout the book. Les seemed like a scary and tough guy, but he wasn’t so bad as everyone first thought. I think every character in this book was able to see the others as someone different from before. In their own way, I thought everyone was brave even when they were really scared. 

Michael Northrop does a great job at giving the storm a life of its own, making it the center of the story. That storm was relentless and unforgiving each and everyday and I got to see that through Northrop’s beautiful descriptions in his writing. While Trapped has a very slow pacing in the beginning, the writing moves easily and it doesn’t take long for things to really pick up. For me, the slow pacing really allowed me to get to know the story and the setting and really get into it. As a reader, I was able to experience the fear, the desolation, and the inability of have any control over anything. Trapped had that perfect foreboding tone and a sense of hopelessness that Northrop really captured well. There were plenty of times where I was put on edge because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I knew something bad was going to happen, I just didn’t know exactly what. I also have to commend on Northrop’s ability to write reality. He gives us a believable 15 year old voice, a believable snow storm, believable survival tactics, and most of all, believable and true emotions from the characters. 

I have to confess that the ending was slightly disappointing for me in the sense that I didn’t get the closure I wanted. However, like I said before, this is the reality of a true disaster. I think the ending was intentional so that a reader will have their own interpretation because truly, anything could have happened at that point. Nonetheless, this did not hinder my overall enjoyment and likeness of the book. 

All in all, Trapped gives a whole different meaning to truly being stuck. With the instinct of survival in place, the loss that is sure to happen, and the hope that is clinging to mere fingertips comes a story that will have you rethinking the way you cope during a natural disaster. 

*Review copy provided by publisher, thanks Scholastic!

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Giveaway!

One winner will win a finished copy of Trapped by Michael Northrop!

Open to International residents 

-- Go forth and enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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More about the Author

Michael Northrop is the author of two YA novels—Gentlemen, one of the American Library Association's "Best Books for Young Adults" for 2010, and Trapped, a Spring 2011 Indie Next List selection—and the new middle grade novel Plunked. He spent 12 years chasing stories at Sports Illustrated Kids, the last five as baseball editor. His articles and stories have been published widely.

Connect with Michael Northrop:

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