Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Summer Break
SERIES: Summer Days
AUTHOR: Heidi Champa
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill Press, LLC
LENGTH: 33,000 Words
BLURB:
Five years ago, Miles Weller’s life changed forever. He told his parents he was gay, and instead of getting support, he got kicked out of his house. Miles turned to his Uncle Steven for help, and soon began living and working at his uncle’s LGBT campground, The Acres. Since that time, Miles got on with his life and attained a college degree, with Steven supporting him every step of the way. Now, a new job and his own apartment await Miles at the end of the summer. The only thing missing is a love life, but Miles plans to rectify that during his last days working at The Acres.
Miles thinks he’s looking only for a fling, but instead finds Elliot Donovan, his old crush from high school, standing by the bonfire one night. It soon becomes clear that old feelings between the men are very much alive, and Miles finds himself falling for Elliot. But a secret Elliot is keeping threatens to end things before they really get started.
Can Miles get beyond his rocky and complicated history and fully embrace his future? Or will he let his past hurts keep him from ever really moving on?
REVIEW:
From the first paragraph of this book, we’re given the impression that Miles thinks of himself as a dork. 5 years before, Miles had a disastrous coming out experience. When he told his parents that he was gay at 19, they threw him out, cut off his college tuition and told him never to come back. Luckily he had a gay uncle, Steven, who took him in and put him to work to his gay campground, The Acres.
Miles suffers from a low self-esteem and doesn’t know how to approach the hot men who come to the campground. Although he has seen some wild stuff since he came to the campground, he has always hung back and never tried to meet anyone. Now he has finally had enough and is ready to meet someone. He goes to the bar in the campground, but after an hour, the only contact he has had is one guy who smirked at him after looking him up and down, then just walked away without saying a word to Miles. Anyone who has ever had that experience will relate and feel really bad for Miles at this point. So Miles heads off to the bonfire, renowned for being the place the desperate go to find someone to hook up with. Still no one looks at him, until he stands up to go get another beer and runs smack into someone. While apologizing the guy says Miles name and it turns out to be Elliott, Miles old high school crush from when they were both on the swim team.
What follows is a sweet tale of two men getting to know each other, while dealing with drama; lack of self-worth; a huge secret on Elliot’s part; and resistance to change on Miles part.
I enjoyed this book. It was shorter than I would prefer. I would have liked more detail on the characters, as I was never able to really picture any of them in my mind because they were not described well enough to get an image of them. Finally, I’m not personally a huge fan of a two page Epilogue tying the loose ends up but the author did a good job with it. Based on this book, I will definitely search out and read the other books in her Summer Days series.
RATING: 
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