Summer of Yesterday is a time-travel romance from a teenager's point of view - it felt authentically teenagery to me, though at 30 years old, I might not be the best judge of that. I do think that I would have loved it when I was a teen myself. Other than the time travel, the main selling point is that it takes place at Ft Wilderness in 1982.

The plot was a little bit perfunctory, and I had many moments where I couldn't figure out exactly how much time had passed since Haley had arrived in 1982. I remember at one point, the description of time made it seem as though she'd been there for several days, when in fact only one afternoon had passed! The romance aspect also seemed a little weak, but I suppose I could attribute that to it being a story about a fifteen-year-old. If anything, it was the ending that bothered me the most. I was half expecting Haley to have dreamed her trip back in time, but instead we got a very swift transition back to current time that felt a little off, as though the book would have been better to have another thirty or fifty pages.

Although I love time travel stories, it was definitely the setting at Walt Disney World that made me request a library copy of the book. I basically grew up with monthly trips to Fort Wilderness, since my dad and us kids enjoyed camping, but my mom liked the creature comforts that the Disney campground provided, as compared to the state parks or something. I did think it would be fun to read a book set in a place filled with nostalgia, but that may also have been a problem... I found myself nitpicking a lot of little details that were clearly changed to facilitate the story, but which weren't exactly truthful, and then being disappointed that other features and favorites of the resort weren't mentioned at all.

Overall, it's a fun read, and not bad if you enjoy light time travel stories. Much of the plot is actually about Haley gaining confidence in herself and repairing her relationship with her family, but it's done with a mostly chaste romance with a slightly older teenage boy. But if you're intimately familiar with the setting, you might find yourself nitpicking like I did. ( )

All right, let's be upfront here and say that my five stars for this book are essentially for my absolute unmitigated DELIGHT that someone wrote a YA book that takes place in River Country, the (now closed) water park attached to the Fort Wilderness camp gound at Walt Disney World.

I should probably say what the book is about before going on with my ranting about River Country. A teenage girl goes back in time, to the 1980s, and ends up at River Country, where she meets a cute boy. That was all fine.

This book is essentially about teenagers at Fort Wilderness, and I was about 8 on the first of the vacations we took there, and 11 on the second -- which is exactly when this book is set, and it completely brought back memories of being 11 years old and having fun with other kids, but also watching the teenagers and thinking they were SO COOL and how I couldn't wait to be a teenager so I could have the BIGGEST FEATHERED HAIR IN ALL OF DISNEY and sit on my Minnie Mouse towel on a beach chair in all of my feathered glory. The author nailed every tiny detail, it was a rush, even when she would describe the characters walking from place to place, it was EXACTLY how it was. She described the chairs. And the gift shops. And the attitude of the 80s. Um, why would you need a life jacket? Are you planning on falling out of the canoe? ( )