Now I won’t give spoilers although I realize someone who wants to know what I’m talking about and hasn’t read either Summer or Winter will be able to find out all the details somewhere online. It was at this point I realized what the ending was going to be, and for the life of me, I fought it, telling myself that Bell would recant and change the ending for this book even though I knew he wouldn’t.

The latter half of the book is where the story dovetails with the Summer and Winter plots. Victor also teaches him that it is more important to love than be loved, even though all things considered it’s best to be both. Both, Jace finds, are precious and are commodities that must be held tightly because they are often fleeting. What Jace learns from his time with Victor is the value of love and friendship. Yet he ends up breaking everyone’s heart. He’s charismatic enough that everyone likes him and wants to be close to him. They become friends of a sort since Victor is one of those will-o-wisps who alternately lives outdoors or camps out with friends. As Jace calms the young man down, he recognizes in Victor another lonely, stray soul. One night Jace is held up by a guy with mismatched eyes wearing a gorilla mask. Bernie takes Jace under his wing and gives him an after-school job at the station which has a small convenience store. Fortunately, he’s rescued by Bernie Hudson who owns the town’s gas station and whose son had committed suicide.

Read it on public transportation at your peril.Īutumn opens as a teenage Jace, lonely and depressed, throws himself off a bridge into the river in a suicide attempt. Summer was a two-hanky book, Winter a one-hanky tale, but Autumn tops them all as a multi-box book.

They are audience-participation novels to the fullest. Autumn digs a little deeper by fleshing out Jace, once Ben’s partner, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s the most sympathetic of the people involved.īefore getting in too deeply, readers should know that these books stand alone well and are perfect to laugh and cry over. Something Like Summer shows the life-changing events when Ben meets Tim, told from Ben’s point of view Something Like Winter retells the tale from Tim’s viewpoint. It’s the same story told and retold, almost as if Bell were trying to grasp the core of what happens, but knows that perception changes everything. Bell’s Something Like series sticks to a reader’s mind and pops up unexpectedly at the oddest moments.

Something Like Summer by Jay Bell