Morgan MatsonCríticas

*Thank you to the publishers and the author for providing me a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.*

Darcy believes in love at first sight. I, on the other hand, don’t. At all. Which is why I went into this with a bit of trepidation.

The book follows Darcy, who suddenly finds herself stranded at the bus station after a music festival. While trying to find an iPhone charger, she runs into Russell. He’s cute, he’s funny, he’s everything she could ever ask for, and the two of them spend a single, whirlwind day together — which makes Darcy feel like she’s finally living the rom-com life she’s wanted for so long. Until everything comes crashing down.

I was pretty lukewarm on this at the start because it really does start off as a pretty uneventful insta-love type of romance. I found it difficult to become emotionally attached to Darcy and Russell’s story when it seemed their relationship was little more than light-hearted banter.

And then. And then. We get to the 30% mark, and everything changed. The twist is something I surprisingly didn’t see coming (I wasn’t thinking that much lol) but it completely changed the course of the book in a very good way. Suddenly, Darcy and Russell’s relationship felt much more high-stakes and real, and it became extremely clear: This is not a “love at first sight is real” type of book — it’s so much more than that. And I love a book that flips a trope on its head.

When the plot got interesting, so did the characters. Russell became much more than a manic pixie dream boy, and Darcy also seemed to become much more than the typical quirky female lead. I really enjoyed how much depth were added to the characters. The family theme is also really touching, and it manages to insert some well-timed humor and chaos while we’re at it. In the end I was pretty impressed at how mature the story was.

Overall, although it kind of had a slow start, I ended up really enjoying this one, and I think any other chick-lit or YA contemporary romance lover will too.

I honestly couldn't even get to the fairy tale part of this book because the characters were so flat and I don't give a sh*t about Disney. Normally I love Morgan Matson but this is so phoned in.

Morgan is an author I always enjoy. I've read all her books. This is as good as any she has written. You start with Stella, a girl who is obsessed with spreadsheets and logistics, to a point where she's lost touch with the unpredictable beauty of real life. When her boyfriend dumps her, she still goes forth with plans to attend prom, plans that include going to Disneyland beforehand, all dressed up in her gown. Lady fortune has bigger plans, ones that include her best friend's girlfriend inviting a strange boy to join them...Only Reese isn't really a stranger. He was the waiter who witnessed her getting dumped and subsequent disaster when she backed into him and ended up wearing cola all over her white dress. Not the best memory for either, but Reese got fired because of it.
Their prickliness is tipped upside down when they rush back into the castle to retrieve his phone and end up in a fairy tale. He knows the story, she doesn't, and they must work together in order to make it end happily. Read the story, feel the enchantment, and watch Stella discover there's a lot more to life that logistics.

I'm a Morgan Matson fan but 60 pages into Promchanted I was struggling. I just couldn't get into the characters. I like the ancillary characters, Nisha and Allyson more than I liked the main characters.

Stella's boyfriend broke up with her several weeks before prom. It occurred in a restaurant and their waiter, Mauricio, witnessed it all. When he is invited to her pre-prom Disneyland adventure by her friend Allyson, Stella is mortified. Going by the name Reece, he saw Stella at her lowest point. But she tries to make the best of this bad situation.

If this is an enemies to friends romance, they needed a little more 'dislike' before they can get together. There was no spark. There was more of a spark with Stella and her prom nemesis, Avery, than there was with Reece. And if I missed the mark, shame on me for not reading further.

I really loved this read. I found the unique structure of this book to be so fun. I also loved this book was set in NYC and really focused on friendship but also theater life and. I also liked that we got several POV and the back in "sandwich" parts were so fun. I really also liked all the tie backs to the previous books in her world. I really enjoyed this read and loved the focus on friendship so much. Def A new fav for me from this author!

I really enjoyed this book. I have enjoyed all the books set in the Matson world. I really loved not only the formate of this book but also the entire family and the various situations that occurred. I loved the relationship between bill and charlie and just wish we saw a bit more of it throughout the novel. I just love all the high jinx that came from the wedding and all the problems that need to be solved. I thought it also tackled harder issues super well. I really loved the tie backs to her other novels. And it was a prefect summer read!

I loved this book. I love how compicated the story was and also how so many characters were addressed in the story. The story did have adorable romance but so much more with friendship, parents and also art thrown in. I love the boy and girl drama but it was such a fast pace read and i loved the call back to the other novels in the series.

Since you've been gone I really loved this book. I saw myself so much in the character of emily and also some of my own friend in the character of sloane. It is about his girl name emily who friend family falls of the grid one summer and all she leaves behind is a list of 13 things she wants emily to complete.
Emily is a very sheltered girl and she does not like to break her out of her comfort zone especially without her friend there, she is utterly lost but she eventually finds friends that make the summer adventure fun again and she winds up completing her list and in the end finding out what happen to Sloan. i really love how these simple things were really able to change emily as a person and for the first time she was really Emily and not just oh that is "so and so friend".
It was such a fast pace summer read and I really loved the romance as well. I loved the progression and how she handled cheating in this book and the effects it had. It was such a good book and hope to read more by this author soon.
 
Check out Morgan Mathson review smash up: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5kxSACCG0
 

This book was so amazing and so sad! It made me cry and books don't do that often. I really loved the story and how it handled parents being terminally ill. It made me so sad but i was so invested in this story. So good :)

Amy and Rogers Epic detour I really loved his book. This book follows the character of Amy and Roger and they need to drive  across country but they have never really met. This trip becomes long and drawn out but it becomes the adventure of a lifetime and they both really learn to face their fears and also learn to face themselves. This book was very focused on self-discovery for the character of Amy but also about forgiveness and I really loved that.
 
This book also had scrapbook element that followed the trip that they took and i really loved that idea and loved seeing reminders of their trip in visual form to me it made the trip feel more real. 
 
This book also dealt with death of parent and also addiction with a sibling and I liked how the book dealt with these topics and saw the effect it had on everybody lives not just the person addicted. 
 
This book did not end in  neat bow and I still have questions but I really loved this book.
This is a perfect summer read and I loved it so much. 
 
Check out my morgan matson non-spoiler review video. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5kxSACCG0
 

I really loved this read. I found the unique structure of this book to be so fun. I also loved this book was set in NYC and really focused on friendship but also theater life and. I also liked that we got several POV and the back in "sandwich" parts were so fun. I really also liked all the tie backs to the previous books in her world. I really enjoyed this read and loved the focus on friendship so much. Def A new fav for me from this author!

I loved this book. I love how compicated the story was and also how so many characters were addressed in the story. The story did have adorable romance but so much more with friendship, parents and also art thrown in. I love the boy and girl drama but it was such a fast pace read and i loved the call back to the other novels in the series.

I really enjoyed this book. I have enjoyed all the books set in the Matson world. I really loved not only the formate of this book but also the entire family and the various situations that occurred. I loved the relationship between bill and charlie and just wish we saw a bit more of it throughout the novel. I just love all the high jinx that came from the wedding and all the problems that need to be solved. I thought it also tackled harder issues super well. I really loved the tie backs to her other novels. And it was a prefect summer read!

Since you've been gone I really loved this book. I saw myself so much in the character of emily and also some of my own friend in the character of sloane. It is about his girl name emily who friend family falls of the grid one summer and all she leaves behind is a list of 13 things she wants emily to complete.
Emily is a very sheltered girl and she does not like to break her out of her comfort zone especially without her friend there, she is utterly lost but she eventually finds friends that make the summer adventure fun again and she winds up completing her list and in the end finding out what happen to Sloan. i really love how these simple things were really able to change emily as a person and for the first time she was really Emily and not just oh that is "so and so friend".
It was such a fast pace summer read and I really loved the romance as well. I loved the progression and how she handled cheating in this book and the effects it had. It was such a good book and hope to read more by this author soon.
 
Check out Morgan Mathson review smash up: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5kxSACCG0
 

This book was so amazing and so sad! It made me cry and books don't do that often. I really loved the story and how it handled parents being terminally ill. It made me so sad but i was so invested in this story. So good :)

Amy and Rogers Epic detour I really loved his book. This book follows the character of Amy and Roger and they need to drive  across country but they have never really met. This trip becomes long and drawn out but it becomes the adventure of a lifetime and they both really learn to face their fears and also learn to face themselves. This book was very focused on self-discovery for the character of Amy but also about forgiveness and I really loved that.
 
This book also had scrapbook element that followed the trip that they took and i really loved that idea and loved seeing reminders of their trip in visual form to me it made the trip feel more real. 
 
This book also dealt with death of parent and also addiction with a sibling and I liked how the book dealt with these topics and saw the effect it had on everybody lives not just the person addicted. 
 
This book did not end in  neat bow and I still have questions but I really loved this book.
This is a perfect summer read and I loved it so much. 
 
Check out my morgan matson non-spoiler review video. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5kxSACCG0
 

Two modern teens.
One classic fairy tale.
Absolutely no cell service.

Stella Griffin doesn’t believe in fairy tales. Ever since her boyfriend dumped her three weeks before the prom— not ideal timing—she’s convinced every love story is a lie.

She’s ready to skip the prom entirely. But she and her best friend, Nisha, have been planning for years to celebrate at Disneyland before the prom . . . an OG OC tradition. But even being all dressed up at the Happiest Place on Earth isn’t salvaging Stella’s night. Nisha has brought along her friend Reece to join them, and he and Stella do not get along. They’re like oil and water. Cats and dogs. Aladdin and Jafar. And so what if Reece is, fine, kind of cute? Stella’s over it all. Happily-ever-afters, true love’s kisses, princes on white horses. It’s not real.

. . . Or is it?

Because when Stella and Reece push through a hidden door in Sleeping Beauty’s castle, they’re not in Anaheim anymore. They’re in the story. In Sleeping Beauty —with Aurora and Phillip, the fairies, Maleficent, and extremely intelligent woodland creatures.

Unfortunately, they’ve landed right in the middle of the story—which throws things off. Suddenly, Aurora and Phillip are meeting before they were supposed to. The fairies are suspicious of the interlopers, and even Maleficent gets word of their arrival.

Stella and Reece will have to put aside their differences, make sure Aurora and Phillip fall in love, and get the story back on track—because if things don’t end the way they’re supposed to . . . they might never get home.

Will they be able to pull off a fairy-tale ending? And will Stella and Reece get a happily-ever-after of their own?

I went into this having finished Since You've Been Gone. I loved that book. It was the first Morgan Matson book that I had read. I fell in love with her writing through that book.

I went into this book expecting it to be amazing, and it was. Not only was the writing beautiful and engaging, but there were dogs. So many dogs. Dogs are my favorite thing in the world, no competition.

The beginning of this book was slow, I won't lie. But once I got into it, each page was a little better than the one before it. While reading this book, I went through many emotions. I laughed, cried, got very angry with the characters for being stupid. Andie and Clark will live on in my mind for a long time to come.

The only major problem that I found with this book was that the main character (Andie) has 3 best friends. I could not remember which one was which for the first half of the book and thought one of them should have been cut out. Once I got to the end, I could see their differences and the value of having all three of them present in this story.

Overall, this was another masterpiece by Morgan Matson, I look forward to reading another one of her books.

Family, summer camp, and treasure maps...this book holds all the ingredients to form the foundation for a wonderful read.

Ryanna is an only child with an amazing step-mother and a very loving father, who just happens to be a movie director and script writer. Although her mother died several years before, Ryanna's as happy as can be...until she receives a letter. Her grandparents, the ones from her mother's side which she forgot exist, have invited her to stay with them for the summer. At first, she refuses but when realizing that she'll have a chance to learn more about her mother, decides to give it a go. What she doesn't expect is to land in the middle of cousins, aunts, and uncles, she didn't even know she had. Worse yet, the ex-summer camp that belongs to her grandparents is in danger of being torn down...and when if that happens, all the clues surrounding her mother would disappear, too.

The setting is every reader's dream: an empty summer camp with lake, docks, forests, kayaks, and the freedom to run around almost however the kids please. Plus, Ryanna's relatives pack tons of personality and fun. Even the adults (for the most part, anyway) take life in stride and handle things with patience, humor, and finesse. It's the perfect setting to launch Ryanna's search for more about her mother, especially since this involves a treasure map with all sorts of clues. While some of these were obvious (not to Ryanna, though), the search adds to the excitement.

The mystery left behind by Ryanna's mother plays along between adventures with the cousins and worries about the neighbor, who is threatening to bulldoze the camp to the ground. Then, there's the side problem of the father's not-so-smooth relationship with the grandparents. In other words, there's always something going on. It creates a rich read but makes for a longer one, too. Still, it's fun to follow every moment of shenanigans, and there are quite a few.

This is a fun summer camp adventure that will have readers wishing they could join Ryanna and her cousins, and go on as many adventures as they do. I received a complimentary ARC and found this to be a fun group.

The narrator/main character is appealing and likeable and believable.

The dialogue is really good and natural. I appreciate it. I like how it is mentioned that Holden was named for a favorite book character of his father’s but Catcher in the Rye was never specifically mentioned.

I love diversity in contemporary children’s literature and I liked it here but this book seemed to go out of its way to check as many boxes as it could. This is done only when the characters are first introduced. After that I didn’t see anything else about it. I don’t know whether or not I like that but I think that I do.

I always wanted a big family and even though it’s for just the summers this grouping is one I found appealing. Great inter-generational story.

I would have loved this book at ages 9-11. The main character loves mystery books and has a mystery (or a few mysteries) to solve and her trying to get info about the mother who died when she was very young were all my cup of tea and would have also been when I was the target age for this story. The mysteries I could mostly guess from miles away but they were still entertaining. The whole scenario is a bit formulaic I suppose but it worked. I had to suspend disbelief just a bit regarding the main mystery being solved. The situation with Ryanna’s father and grandparents being happily resolved seemed believable because they are all good people.

These kids are 9-13 and I would have known by 9 that their lame email did NOT sound as though it was from an adult. It was a bit annoying that they all thought it would pass muster. It could have been written in a way that was a bit more credible. I found it annoying.

This has a classic book feel to it even though our main character has a smart phone.

All the food made me hungry. (I veganized it in my mind which was slightly hard to do with only one food item. graham crackers for the s’mores – I’ve never found any or any recipe that are vegan and that use graham flour or enough of it)

I got a kick out of the last short chapter.

I enjoyed the whole reading experience. There is a lot going on in this book but it all seems to work. The characters and their relationships and the settings are all great.

This is a perfect summer book and would make a great family read aloud book.

I don’t usually feel this way about children’s novels but this is one I really wanted to read to/with some children 8-11 or that I wish I had at least read when I was in that age range. Reading this to a child or group of children would have made the book even more fun for me. I still enjoyed it just reading it on my own.

A couple of quotes that I liked:

“She still had two parents, after all – she didn’t know what it meant to have only one, and have everything they left become rare and special and precious.”

“If something stayed unknown, unopened, the possibilities could be endless, and you wouldn’t be disappointed – but it also wasn’t real.”

I've read all of Morgan's books and was curious about her ability to switch from YA to middle grade. She does so seamlessly. Take a girl whose mom died when she was very young, a father who refuses to tell her anything about the maternal side of her family, a summer when she gets to choose whether to meet her late mother's parents at a camp on a lake back east, and you have the beginning of a great story. It's two part mystery. First is what Mom was like when she was Ryanna's age, second is why her father is estranged from her Mom's side of the family. When she arrives at her grandparents, after accidentally getting off on the wrong foot with a cousin she never knew about at a convenience store, she's floored to discover she has an abundance of maternal relatives, not to mention that the family compound is in danger of being turned into condos by a greedy man who lives across the lake. Add in Ryanna discovering a treasure map her mom created when she was twelve, a friendship with the son of the greedy man, a slow building of familial bonds, and she and her cousins solving a great treasure hunt, and you have a great read, one that satisfies no matter what your age.

Ryanna's summer is all planned out when a letter arrives from her estranged maternal grandparents: they want her to spend the summer with them in Pennsylvania. Seeing an opportunity to get to know more about her mother, who died when Ryanna was three, she agrees to the change in plans. What she doesn't expect to find is that her grandparents' home is a former summer camp, and she has a whole crew of aunts, uncles, and cousins that she doesn't remember, all eager to get to know her. After a rocky start involving a spilled slushy, Ryanna settles in for a summer of fun. What she and her cousins don't know is that it may be the last such summer: the ownership of the camp property is disputed, the handwritten deed is lost, and if it can't be found before the fall, the camp will be torn down to make way for lakeside condos. Is there anything Ryanna and her cousins can do to save the camp?

This is a fun, summery read with a wholesome vibe. I think kids, especially those longing for a big group of friends or cousins to adventure with, will really enjoy this book. Adult readers may find themselves having to suspend disbelief on certain key points, and few of the adults have really fleshed-out characterization, but it does a great job of conveying a summertime mood.

The Firefly Summer is a full length middle grade novel of nearly 400 pages. It's an absolutely delightful read and I'm not kidding when I tell you I thoroughly enjoyed it as a grown up! In fact I was amazed at how well this book is written to entertain both children and adults.

Ryanna Stuart's orderly life in Southern California as the only child of a widowed father is about to be turned topsy turvy when they receive a letter from her maternal grandparents (whom she has never met) inviting her to come to the family Summer Camp Van Camp in the Poconos.

She steps straight into the pages of one of the mystery books she so dearly loves, complete with a haunted cabin! And a real life mystery must be solved in order to preserve this beloved family camp and tradition before it is bulldozed and turned into ugly, modern condos by the "neighbor" across the lake. Along the way family bonds are built and Ryanna is surrounded by the places and things her mother grew up loving. By the time the summer is over and Ryanna reluctantly must return to her life in California, she has truly come to know the mother who was taken from her when she was just three years old.

I received The Firefly Summer through the Goodreads Giveaway program as an Advance Reader softcover copy and I'm so glad I had the opportunity of reading this enjoyable book (for all ages!), though targeted to Middle Grade children.

It is incredibly ironic that a book about a family with big parallels to a fictional family would have huge parallels to a family I know. Insanely weird. Overly strange.

Spoiler alert: The dog does not die.

I loved this one. It was jolly and merry and at times romcomesque (a wedding!) but deals with growing up and accepting change and understanding one's place and it made me feel very warm and fuzzy and it had the PERFECT amount of romance and the way both romances resolved was absolutely splendid.

Though I could not keep Siobahn and Brooke straight and that caused me some confusion.

The premise of this book wasn't as emphasised as I had predicted it would be. While Sloane's absence jumpstarted the book, it was really the list she left that gave rise to the story's actions.

I really enjoyed seeing how Emily gained her own group of friends after Sloane left. There were two scenes, one early on and one later, that contrasted how she had grown and changed.

I was very satisfied with the ending. It was a happy ending, which would normally mean that I don't like it; however, I thought that it neatly tied up all loose ends in a satisfying way.