Book Review: Until Next Summer | Ali Brady

Nostalgic, heartwarming, and uplifting! Ali Brady’s Until Next Summer sees two best friends reunite at their former summer camp for one more summer fling. As they say, “once a camp person, always a camp person.”

What is Until Next Summer about?

Growing up, Jessie and Hillary lived for summer, when they’d be reunited at Camp Chickawah. The best friends vowed to become counselors together someday, but they drifted apart after Hillary broke her promise and only Jessie stuck to their plan, working her way up to become the camp director. 

When Jessie learns that the camp will be sold, she decides to plan one last hurrah, inviting past campers—including Hillary—to a nostalgic “adult summer camp” before closing for good. Jessie and Hillary rebuild their friendship as they relive the best time of their lives—only now there are adult beverages, skinny dipping, and romantic entanglements. Straitlaced Hillary agrees to a “no strings attached” summer fling with the camp chef, while outgoing Jessie is drawn to a moody, reclusive writer who’s rented a cabin to work on his novel.

The friends soon realize this doesn’t have to be the last summer. They’ll team up and work together, just like the old days. But if they can’t save their beloved camp, will they be able to take the happiness of this summer away with them?

What did I think?

I loved this book! I actually was not a summer camp person, but I remember my cousins and a few friends going to summer camp every year and I was so envious. Many of them have retained friendships with people they spent every summer with at camp. Even without much personal experience, I found the themes of Until Next Summer easy to relate to. Friendships formed at a time in our life where we are most open to finding our soulmates. Falling out and losing touch as we grow up and get different lives. A search to reconnect with the happiness of youth. The possibility of new romances. 

The book centers around Jessi and Hillary, who were best friends at Camp Chickawah and spent their summers together every year. They had big plans to eventually become camp counselors together (I’d imagine this is an aspiration of many summer camp kids!), but Hillary took a different job the year they were to reunite as counselors, leaving Jessie alone. Jessie eventually worked her way up the camp ladder to the Director of Camp Chickawah. She and Hillary have lost touch. But when she learns the camp is to be sold, she invites former camp friends back for one last reunion and summer of fun.

Does adult summer camp kind of sound like the best thing ever? If it weren’t for the heat and bugs I’d say it sounds like a blast. I was anxious to see how Hillary and Jessie would reconnect, but as with the best of friendships, they picked back up right where they left off (with a few things to work out, obviously). Of course, this isn’t only a book about friendship, there’s a romance or two as well! Hillary is running the arts and crafts, but her heart is drawn to the camp cook, Cooper. Years ago, Cooper was her first kiss. Nothing like love revisiting, amirite? Meanwhile Jessie is in one of those classic “you infuriate me but I’m into you” situations with a quiet and slightly grumpy writer who came to work on his novel and be left alone. 

Romances are blossoming, friendships are rekindling, and these two dynamic friends may just be able to save the camp after all, if they work together. Cocktails and ghost stories by the campfire, classic camp games of capture the flag, good-natured pranking between cabins, and friendships that have the comfort that can only come from those who knew one another their whole lives. The two romances are fun, but I felt the star of the story was the friendship between Jessie and Hillary. Sometimes the best soulmates aren’t romantic at all!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.