Reviewed by Cheryl
TITLE: Why Can’t Freshman Summer Be Like Pizza
SERIES: The Pizza Chronicles #2
AUTHOR: Andy V. Roamer
PUBLISHER: NineStar Press
LENGTH: 208 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2020
BLURB:
RV, having successfully completed his freshman year at the demanding Boston Latin School, is hoping for a great summer. He’s now fifteen years old and looking forward to sharing many languid summer days with his friend Bobby, who’s told him he has gay feelings too. But life and family and duties for a son of immigrant parents makes it difficult to steal time away with Bobby.
Bobby, too, has pressures. He spends part of the summer away at football camp, and his father pushes him to work a summer job at a friend’s accounting firm. Bobby takes the job grudgingly, wanting to spend any extra time practicing the necessary skills to make Latin’s varsity football team.
On top of everything, RV’s best friend Carole goes away for the summer, jumping at an opportunity to spend it with her father in Paris. Luckily, there is always Mr. Aniso, RV’s Latin teacher, to talk to whenever RV is lonely. He’s also there for RV when he inadvertently spills one of Bobby’s secrets, and Bobby is so angry RV is afraid he is ready to cut off the friendship.
REVIEW:
I very much enjoyed the first book of this series Why Can’t Life be Like Pizza, and as the second book in the series Why Can’t Freshman Summer be Like Pizza didn’t disappoint. It was very definitely a young adult book, aimed at and best suited for a younger audience. There is something about the naivety and introspection of a fifteen-year-old that can be lost on the older audience who, I think, may struggle to get the way RV processes and internalizes events in his life. It’s something I’ve thought about before in young adult writing. I’ve seen more than one criticism from adults that the characters behave immaturely, or that they make decisions or take actions that make no sense or that surely no one would do. That is, no adult. I hope that won’t be the case here because I feel that the author is particularly skilled at writing consistently from a teenage viewpoint.
Sure, RV is a particularly mature teenager, but even so he makes decisions, processes information, worries and acts in a very teenage way. It’s easy to judge from an adult perspective but also refreshing to put ourselves back in the shoes of our fifteen-year-old selves and remember how big everything was, and how important small things felt. From family relationships to shootings, to all the possible meanings of a text or casual comment.
We delve a little further into the Lithuanian viewpoint with RV’s parents reflecting on their history while moving toward being made American citizens. From RV’s perspective, it’s all in the past, as he was born in America and in many ways it is impossible for him to understand what it was like to go through what his parents did and why his father, in particular, finds it difficult to let go, and perhaps gives a little more perspective on why the Lithuanian community is so close and so important to his parents.
As well as being an interesting journey through the minefield of a teenage summer, the book shines a light on some serious issues such a racialism and homophobia. Not the in-your-face violence of the previous book but in a more insidious way.
The book is extremely well written and mostly consistent in pov and voice. RV has to deal with some difficult issues and his struggles are well fleshed and with emotional depth. It’s a must-read for teens, and I think adults will find plenty to keep them interested, and they might even learn something.
I’m looking forward to the next book in the series
RATING: 
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