Perfect Summer takes place in the future in the UK where fifteen year old Morgan envies her best friend Summer because Summer has the perfect life: rich parents, cute boys, and she is beautiful. Morgan, on the other hand, is not beautiful. Boys don’t even give her a second glance, and her family depends on her parents' jobs just to keep going. In addition, Morgan has a little brother named Josh who has Down Syndrome, something that is considered as an abomination in this society where perfection is obsessed over. But when Josh is kidnapped, Morgan, Summer, and their new friend, Jamie, work together to try and save Josh as well as Jamie’s kid sister, Holly.
This book was amazing, as it was easy to relate to the characters, and it put a perfect twist on society’s obsession with perfection; but there was one thing about the book that was misleading. When I first saw Perfect Summer, two things popped into my mind: 1) This book was going to be like Uglies by Scott Westerfield, and 2) this book was going to focus on Summer, Morgan’s best friend—I was definitely wrong about the second thing. I really thought the title was misleading because the book really did not have anything to do with Summer. Instead, it focused on Morgan and her brother Josh (the confusion was cleared though as I read the summary on the back of the book). As I read the book, I fell in love with it: King does a great job portraying the dislike of RADs—children with disabilities—in the futuristic society, comparing it to society in the 1960s where children with disabilities were looked down upon. Honestly, King’s book reminds me of a mix between The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and The Uglies. I would recommend this book to anyone 12+, as there is some mature content in the novel.