The Summer I Became a Nerd
Leah Rae Miller
Entangled Publishing
May 7, 2013
4 stars
Ever since a degrading incident middle school incident,
Madelyne Summers has hidden her true self away and pretended to be something
she wasn’t. Now on the verge of becoming a senior in high school, her world is
about to come crashing apart. One of the things she has kept hidden is her love
of comic books, downloading them on to her computer rather than buying the
print copy. But the final issue of her favorite series isn’t going to be in
electronic format and the copy she ordered didn’t show up on release day.
Unwilling to wait another two months and have to avoid her favorite sites so
she wouldn’t find spoilers, Maddie disguises herself and heads for the local
comic book shop.
When she arrives there, the young man behind the counter, a
classmate, is reading the very last copy. After much teasing, he allows her to
borrow his copy of the comic book shop. Maddie discovers she likes this boy,
one with whom she can be her true self. She starts lying to everyone to cover
her tracks, which only leads to one huge disaster after another, including
hurting Logan Scott repeatedly, something she never wanted to do.
The Summer I Became A
Nerd is an adorable cautionary tale on the perils of not being true to
yourself and living a life of lies. Maddie walks a tightrope between her two
halves until she finally realizes she can’t continue down that path, and she
also discovers that despite her worries
that people would think less of her, those who matter didn’t care that she
loved comic books, and that ultimately, what others thought really didn’t
matter.
