Author Interview: Jennifer Salvato Doktorski (The Summer After Me and You Blog Tour)

Today we have Jennifer Salvato Doktorski here for an author interview! This interview is part of the blog tour for her newest release, The Summer After Me and You.

1. I love books set in the summer, like How My Summer Went Up in Flames and The Summer After You and Me. What makes you want to set your stories in the summer?

I didn’t plan it that way, but this is my third novel set in the summer! When you write a book, you spend a lot of time “living” your story. The characters feel like real people, and the setting feels like a real place. This particular story was written between September and March and I have to say, as the months turned colder, it was nice to be living at the warm Jersey Shore—inside my head at least. There were many times that I forgot there was snow on the ground until I looked up from my laptop and remembered it was winter.

2. If you had to pair up your main character Lucy with any other character from any other YA book (either romantically or as a friend), who would it be and why?

Well, Lucy and Sam from Famous Last Words would definitely be friends. They’re both serious, smart girls who are more focused on college and careers than boys. Spencer from How My Summer Went Up in Flames is one of my favorite characters. I love him for his big heart and unabashed nerdiness and I’m still rooting for him to find his soul mate. Too bad Lucy and Spencer never met. I can picture a scenario where the pair really hits it off at smart camp.

3. How do you go about naming your characters?

My daughter picked Lucy’s name for this novel, so I have to give her the credit! Most times though, I pick names that I like or seem to fit the personality of the character. When I was choosing a name for my daughter, I made a short list of faves. The names I didn’t pick have ended up as characters, which is fitting because in a lot of ways, those characters come to feel like my children. Rosie in How My Summer Went Up in Flames is named for the Springsteen song “Rosalita” and Andrew Clark, from The Summer After You and Me, is named after my first friend in kindergarten. We both took the wrong bus home from school on the first day and I’ve never forgotten him.

4. For any aspiring writers out there - what's the best writing advice you've ever received?

One of my favorite books about craft is Stephen King’s On Writing. I re-read all or parts of it all the time. Here is my favorite quote from that book:
“Don’t wait for the muse…Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three.”
Even before I was lucky enough to get paid to write fiction, I treated writing like a full-time job. The other piece of advice that I always come back to is from Meg Cabot. I read an interview with her in Writer’s Digest in which she said that she writes about things that she wished happened to her. It’s something I keep in mind with all my characters.

5. Without spoiling anything, could you tell us what was your favorite scene to write in The Summer After Me and You?

My favorite scene to write was the one that formed the basis of this novel. It’s the scene that shows what happened between Lucy and her longtime summer neighbor and crush, Connor Malloy, on the day before Superstorm Sandy hits the Jersey Shore. It was written before most of the book and rewritten more than any other scene.

Make sure to check out all the other stops of the blog tour, and keep your eye out for The Summer After Me and You, which was released May 1st. Here's what it's all about:

The Summer After Me and You by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Sunbathing, surfing, eating funnel cake on the boardwalk—Lucy loves living on the Jersey Shore. For her, it's not just the perfect summer escape, it is home. And as a local girl, she knows not to get attached to the tourists. They breeze in over Memorial Day weekend, crowding the shore and stealing moonlit kisses, only to pack up their beach umbrellas and empty promises on Labor Day. Lucy wants more from love than a fleeting romance, even if that means keeping her distance from her summertime neighbor and crush, Connor.
Then Superstorm Sandy tears apart her barrier island, briefly bringing together a local girl like herself and a vacationer like Connor. Except nothing is the same in the wake of the storm. And day after day, week after week, Lucy is left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and broken home. Now with Memorial Day approaching and Connor returning, will it be a summer of fresh starts or second chances?

Review: How My Summer Went Up in Flames by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Title: How My Summer Went Up in Flames
Author: Jennifer Salvato Doktorski
Publisher: SimonPulse
Release date: May 7th 2013
Pages: 307
Genre: Young Adult contemporary romance
Source: Bought
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Rosie’s always been impulsive. She didn’t intend to set her cheating ex-boyfriend’s car on fire. And she never thought her attempts to make amends could be considered stalking. So when she’s served with a temporary restraining order on the first day of summer vacation, she’s heartbroken—and furious.
To put distance between Rosie and her ex, Rosie’s parents send her on a cross-country road trip with responsible, reliable neighbor Matty and his two friends. Forget freedom of the road, Rosie wants to hitchhike home and win back her ex. But her determination starts to dwindle with each passing mile. Because Rosie’s spark of anger? It may have just ignited a romance with someone new…

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I think whether or not you will like How My Summer Went Up in Flames depends a lot on you opinion of our main character Rosie. I've read reviews by people who love her and by people who couldn't stand Rosie because of her impulsiveness and her lack of understanding of how serious her situation is. I didn't really mind her disregard for consequences and her irrational ways all that much - she's relatably flawed, and I love having a different type of contemporary YA narrator for once.

But there are still some things that bothered me about Rosie, most importantly her expressions on issues of gender. There's some serious slut-shaming going on in Rosie's opinions and depictions of her breakup with Joey. She talks about sex as if it's something that she would never do, and condemns Joey's new girlfriend - and her friend Avery - for having done it, which is not okay. Her views of gender roles bothered me so much - she keeps making offensive comments about femininity, and lets her whole life revolve around guys, having no ambitions for herself. (She liked saying "Joey's wife" when people would ask her what she wants to be later on.) This is never really addressed as a problem, which frustrated me throughout the novel. The same goes for issue's of class - from the way Rosie, her family, and the guys' families treat money, they all have to have quite a lot of it, and that's never really mentioned in the novel. Instead, they're the ones who are "normal," in comparison to their ultra-rich friend Avery, which results in scenes like Rosie being surprised they are taking a limousine to the club and commenting that her family only uses limousines on prom or to get to the airport. The never-addressed privilege that is so obvious in scenes like those perpetuates really problematic depictions of class and privilege, and it bothered me throughout Rosie's story.

Since we're already on the topic of problematic depictions of privilege and oppression, let's talk about the whitewashing of this cover. Rosie's mother is from Ecuador and her father is Italian, so she is described to have a dark complexion. She also refers to herself as curvy throughout the novel. So of course the cover model had to be... a skinny white girl. Just... ugh. So many problems.

Despite all these issues that my feminist/social-activist self had with the novel, there are still some parts of the story that I really enjoyed. I always love road trips, and this one is no exception - I loved reading about all their stops and adventures. Rosie's interactions with the guys are entertaining too, and I especially loved Matty. I'm not a huge fan of the romance because I don't think it's necessary for the story, but as far as unnecessary, predictable romance goes, this one is at least kind of cute.

How My Summer Went Up in Flames was an okay read for me. It's a quick, entertaining book, and there are plenty of things I enjoyed about it. Looking deeper, though, there are issues that I couldn't ignore, meaning I couldn't absolutely love this book. How My Summer Went Up in Flames is a cute, fun summer read, but nothing more.