Book Review- The Summer of Skinny Dipping

I finished reading The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells late last night.

From Goodreads:

"Sometimes I still wake up shivering in the early hours of the morning, drowning in dreams of being out there in the ocean that summer, of looking up at the moon and feeling as invisible and free as a fish. But I'm jumping ahead, and to tell the story right I have to go back to the very beginning. To a place called Indigo Beach. To a boy with pale skin that glowed against the dark waves. To the start of something neither of us could have predicted, and which would mark us forever, making everything that came after and before seem like it belonged to another life.

My name is Mia Gordon: I was sixteen years old, and I remember everything...."

After getting dumped by her boyfriend, Mia is looking forward to spending a relaxing summer in the Hamptons with her glamorous cousins. But when she arrives she find her cousins distant, moody, and caught up with a fast crowd. Mia finds herself lonelier than ever, until she meets her next-door-neighbor, Simon Ross. And from the very first time he encourages her to go skinny dipping, she's caught in a current impossible to resist.

Timeless in feel, The Summer of Skinny-Dipping is a poignant, literary coming-of-age romance that will live on long after summer has ended.
 
This book was a typical teenage summer love story with a tragedy at the end. I thought it was something like I would have read back in the nineties when I was a teenager.  It was all very predictable. 
 
That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading it-- I did.  But there wasn't much to think about while reading it.  I felt like I knew what was coming the whole time. 
 
I did like the main character Mia.  I felt like she could be any teenager dealing with teenage heartbreak.  She seemed very likeable and real. I also liked Simon, although for some reason I kept thinking that he seemed older than he really was.  He seemed almost like a college guy to me instead of a boy who was going to be a senior in high school.
 
If you you're looking for a beach read and don't want anything too heavy, then try this one out.
 
I gave this book a rating of 3/5.
 
This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2010 100+ Reading Challenge: 69
2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 51
2010 Debut Author Challenge: 19
 
*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review from Sourcebooks Publicity.