Book Review | What it Was Like by Peter Seth

This teenage love story begins at a summer camp in upstate New York when the Columbia bound narrator meets beautiful, wealthy high schooler Rachel. What it Was Like tells the story of how the two got to know each other, fell in love, dealt with obstructions to shakily maintain a distance relationship, and ultimately paid the price for wrongdoing. Seth keeps the secret of what exactly goes wrong between the two for almost the entire book while he writes about their all-consuming love by focusing on concrete events.

Being a fairly long novel at over 450 pages, this book took me a while to get through. The beginning, while something I could relate to having previously been a summer camp counselor, was a bit slow and did not immediately draw my attention. The narration of the book is in first person, chronological and very easy to follow. Physical and situational descriptions are adequate for the reader to draw mental pictures. These positive things said, the book was a let down for me. Overall, the word melodramatic comes to mind. The emphasis was so great on concrete events that I felt character emotions could have used more attention. I was looking for more of a love story that would lead me to feel something. This book could be appealing to those dealing with sociopath partners. Check out the book or ebook from a library near you.