Chase Talks About Different Styles of Book Reviews

I am one of those rare people that prefers to read eBooks over print books. The smell of books and turning the pages don't mean that much to me. With that in mind, I have poured through a few online eBook catalogs and through the Kindle store on Amazon. I cannot remember when I came across eBook only titles, but I was kind of fascinated by them. To me, they were similar to the cheap supermarket books we would keep on a shelf at my library where people came in and swapped out a handful with their own as they took a handful. The people that read these stories are looking for something light and easy to read. If they don't like it, they move on to another one. Therefore, I don't think reviews are all that necessary for eBook only titles when it comes to collection development. It's more important to have that virtual shelf stocked with these easy, breezy stories.

Heavy reviewed books like Angela's Ashes are titles that a librarian will look at to determine if it's worthy of the collection and library stakeholders. I feel that librarians look at reviews more than their patrons do. From my experience, patrons find titles through other means such as the morning TV breakfast shows, Oprah, word of mouth, hype, etc. If they do consult book reviews, it's usually from sources like People magazine where reviews typically aren't that in-depth or negative. Plot, subject matter, and author appeal more to patrons so it doesn't matter if a review source only publishes well-reviewed books or not to them. 

For my own personal reading, I do look at reviews on Amazon. I personally like to read the negative reviews because it's easier for me to determine what I don't like in a story. If I survive that process, I will look at the good reviews, but I don't scrutinize them as much. However, if the book is on a subject I really enjoy, then the reviews don't matter to me one way or the other.

Chase Talks About "How to Survive a Summer" Kirkus Style

“I learned the past is not the past, a lump of time you can quarantine and forget about, but a reel of film in your brain that keeps on rolling, spooling and unspooling itself regardless of whether or not you are watching.”

The release of a horror movie based off his summer at a gay conversion camp in southern Mississippi sets Will Dillard on a road trip to confront a time he would rather forget in Nick White’s How to Survive a Summer.

 As a child, he had to come with terms with his sexuality among the influences of his heavily religious father. Will, himself, wants to be right with God. When some relatives appear after his mother’s death, they bring with them the promise of a “pray the gay away” camp called Camp Levi in a place called the Neck, where his mother spent her younger years. Not surprisingly, the camp is no picnic as his aunt, uncle, and two converted camp counselors use unconventional practices to help the campers overcome their homosexuality. Eventually, this leads to the death of one of the campers.

In the present, Will is a grad student in film studies who is unable to make connections with the people in his life as news of a horror movie produced by one of the other campers is about to release. Unable to face the film based off his life, Will travels to face his demons in person. The journey for Will and the readers becomes slow as the promise of a big payoff looms in the distance.

Several interesting factors (the timely topic of conversion therapy, horror movies, southern ways of life, etc.) are all great ingredients, but they never come to together to bake a satisfying cake.