The very first book I read by Sarah Dessen was Dreamland. By the time I'd finished that book, she was automatically catapulted to the top of my list of favorite authors. I started this book with such high expectations but sadly, they were dashed. 
 I am still in love with Sarah Dessen's writing. I am still captivated by the way she expertly weaves strings of words together in a way that not only is utterly enchanting, but also incites emotion in the reader. She has undeniable ability to tell a gripping story in deceptively simple words, something that few authors can pull off, and yet she has done it multiple times in her many bestselling books. 
 But there was almost no plot in this book. The word I would use to describe it is empty : like a pastry with a delicious crust but hollow inside. On the surface, Sarah's language prowess kept me riveted to the pages; I actually did, to some extent, care about Haven, her sister Ashley, and Ashley's ex-boyfriend Sumner as well as other important side characters such as Ashley's fiance, their mother, and Lydia Catrell. I genuinely cared about these characters. I did! But as I read on I started to notice a significant lack of plot in the entire story. Nothing major happened from the very first page to the end. None of the characters were spectacular, memorable, or particularly endearing. Several relationships in the story weren't well developed enough or in some cases, glossed over and not developed at all. There was no character development, and neither was there any significant message to take away from the story. And Haven, the main character, blindly clung to a time when Sumner, Ashley's ex was around, because when he was around he brought light and laughter and everyone in the house gravitated towards him. She believed her life was perfect back then, with a complete family and her big sister being nice towards her, and somehow she thought that if she could get Ashley to talk to Sumner again things would return to what they once was. I get that her life was in such a wreck she was lost and pretty desperate, but her naivete annoyed me at times. And there wasn't really any resolution to the book. Even Haven herself didn't get any closure, let alone the rest of the characters. God, I don't even know how to classify this book at all because it's tagged as contemporary romance, but honestly nothing of that sort happens to Haven. Unless her sister's coming marriage (only a side story) counts? 
 I've noticed that Sarah Dessen's books always have an event that happens which changes the main character's worldview. But in this book, I'm not even sure what really happened. It seemed like Haven just heard another side to the story of Ashley's breakup with her previous boyfriend which altered the way she saw some things, but it didn't come off as something to write an entire book about. 
 I wouldn't say this book was terribly written because I am absolutely in love with Sarah Dessen's writing and somehow she's managed to save a book with no redeeming qualities, using just her amazing writing prowess. This is her debut novel and I'm confident that her talent has only shown itself more and blossomed since then. But That Summer felt to me like a sketch: it had potential, so much potential, interesting plot workings, characters I could root for, but in the end it fell short anyway because it just wasn't fully fleshed out enough.