• About
    • About Us
    • What is Eco-fiction?
    • Contributors
    • Tour Guide
    • Copyright, Privacy, and AI
    • More!
    • News
    • Support Us
  • Authors
    • World Eco-fiction Series
    • Indie Corner
    • Dragonfly Library
    • Women Working in Nature and the Arts
    • All Interviews
    • Quotes
  • Books & Database
    • Database
    • Turning the Tide (for kids)
    • Book Recs
    • Reviews
    • Reviews-Youth
  • Submit
  • Games, Film, Music
  • Blog
  • Links and Resources
Dragonfly: An exploration of eco-fiction
  • About
    • About Us
    • What is Eco-fiction?
    • Contributors
    • Tour Guide
    • Copyright, Privacy, and AI
    • More!
    • News
    • Support Us
  • Authors
    • World Eco-fiction Series
    • Indie Corner
    • Dragonfly Library
    • Women Working in Nature and the Arts
    • All Interviews
    • Quotes
  • Books & Database
    • Database
    • Turning the Tide (for kids)
    • Book Recs
    • Reviews
    • Reviews-Youth
  • Submit
  • Games, Film, Music
  • Blog
  • Links and Resources

Summer Constellations, Alisha Sevigny

Kimberly Christensen

July 14, 2020

Young Adult Fiction
Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen

The summer after senior year of high school should be full of magic, but for Julia Ducharme, it’s full of worry. Julia’s younger brother Caleb is still convalescing from a serious illness, her former summer fling has a new girlfriend and to top it off, Julia’s mom might be forced to sell the campground where their family lives and works.

With her best friend abroad for the summer, Julia has no one to talk to, so she seeks solace in the stars. Julia sets up her telescope at the edge of the lake and, while star-gazing, meets Nick – a handsome, guitar-playing guy who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend’s cousin and the son of the real estate mogul who wants to buy the family campground.

Julia’s feelings – and summer – quickly grow tangled. She sifts through her feelings for her ex as she explores her new relationship with Nick, and quickly realizes that she’s scared to trust. While her trust issues are rooted in the father who abandoned her family, Julia’s also struggling to accept Nick’s attraction at face value because his dad wants to buy their land – and Julia is determined to find a different solution to the family’s financial woes.

Nick is struggling with his own father, but for different reasons. A talented performer, Nick wants to pursue a career in music, while his father wants him to follow in the family real estate investment business. To prove that he’s not acting on his father’s behalf, Nick offers to help save the campground from his father’s plan of developing it into a casino.

As the young people brainstorm ways to keep the campground in the family, they also fix-up Julia’s grandfather’s ramshackle cabin as a hideaway for Caleb. When Julia finds her grandfather’s journal hidden in the cabin, new possibilities open for the preservation of the campground – but exploring her grandfather’s ideas will require that the open herself to asking for help and to trusting those that are offering it to her.

Summer Constellations falls into the romance subgenre of young adult reading, which is not typically my area of interest. However, I was drawn to this book because woven among the predictable girl-thinks-she’s-not-cute-but-the-hot-guy-likes-her-anyway plotline is a beautiful story about the importance of place. Julia has spent her whole life living among the beauty of lake, trees and stars, and the thought of moving away from it shakes her. Beyond wanting to fight for her family’s ties to the place and their way of life, Julia is fighting to preserve the land itself, including the birds that nest there and the purity of the lake. Julia’s fight doesn’t grows out of a direct connection to this place and a deep love of it as a thing that is bigger and more important than the money people could make from developing it. So, even though the romance tropes were a bit tired, Julia’s commitment to her family and her protectiveness of the land gave Summer Constellations a unique twist that kept me reading. 3.5 of 5 stars

Follow

Link Tree

Subscribe to Dragonfly's newsletter



Translate

Selected Interviews

  • Mohammed Ahmad
  • Yaba Badoe
  • R.A. Busby
  • David Brin
  • E.G. Condé
  • Omar El Akkad
  • Helon Habila
  • Julie Janson
  • Cristina Jurado
  • Oonya Kempadoo
  • Wu Ming-yi
  • Pola Oloixarac
  • Waubgeshig Rice
  • Jewell Parker Rhodes
  • Pitchaya Sudbanthad
  • Tlotlo Tsamaase
  • Sheree Renée Thomas
  • Jeff VanderMeer
  • Cynthia Zhang
  • Read more...

Support

Check here for how you can help support this site!

Grist's Imagine 2200

To Labor for the Hive, Jamie Liu

Cabbage Koora: A Prognostic Autobiography, Sanjana Sekhar

A trusted .eco domain

Tags: Alisha Sevigny

Kimberly Christensen

Kimberly Christensen never strays far from the written word, whether she’s penning fictional worlds, engrossed in a book, or hand-lettering protest signs. She lives with her husband, children, dog, 40,000 honeybees and a mischievous house rabbit in Seattle. You can read her story “Still Waters” at https://www.modernliterature.org/2018/02/08/still-waters-by-kimberly-christensen/.

Leave a Comment Cancel

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Geekoscopy Interview
Eco-Genres
DORKS Chat
Extinction Rebellion
Black Lives Matter
Eco-fiction Recs
Eco-weird Interview
Black Lives Matter
A History of Eco-fiction
The Ecological Weird
Rewilding Our Stories: Discord
Social Impact Survey Results
Around the World in 80 Books
Rising Appalachia

Copyright © 2025 — Dragonfly: An exploration of eco-fiction. All Rights Reserved

Designed by WPZOOM