Two best friends, Hal and Chuck, spend their first summer apart. Chuck, the love-smitten, accepting actor, goes to theatre camp. Hal, the charmingly wry curmudgeon, stays home and falls for a pot-smoking French boy. What follows is their hilarious, button-pushing, sincere and very intense blog-o-spondence as they recall and reflect upon each other's madcap summer adventures. Readers will notice, however, that their tete-a-tete soon gives way to weighty and multi-layered discussions about friendship, love, self-respect, sex and physical attraction. Sloan's freshly believable reality and smart-alecky teen-speak lightens the mood but their converstaions often become so intense that the reader will find themselves turning the pages at a slower rate. Even so, the level of complexity frees up Sloan to take Chuck and Hal's friendship in directions that no gay-themed YA novel has ever been before. Their path, traced from a drunken misunderstanding to an unabashed and candid dialogue of ideas and dreams, optimistically underscores a time when young gay and straight men can come together in close, meaningful friendship. And, where they can bandy ideas back and forth in an unflicnhing manner without worrying they'll offend each other.

Move over, Judy Blume. Who knew that teen-lit was so . . . grown up. Covering topics from wet dreams to lesbian moms, young adult fiction has come a long way. If you know any teens or tweens with GLBT interests, here are few new books that might compete with Harry Potter for their summertime attention—and that might teach them a thing or two.

Brian Sloan’s "Tale of Two Summers" (Simon & Schuster) is an engaging, funny, and sexy story about two best friends, Chuck and Hal, who are separated for the summer. The talented, hetero Chuck is away at theater camp, while his best gay pal Hal is stuck at home in suburban D.C. taking driver’s ed at their high school. The novel’s format is a blog exchange between the two boys. It is a sweet, often hilarious study of friendship, the trials and tribulations of teen drama, and of budding sexuality. The blogging technique gives a feeling of immediacy and credibility to the high and lows of this long, hot summer. Hal’s adventures with his chic French friend Henri remind us all of how serious and delicious young love is. That, combined with Chuck’s melodrama with his leading ladies in Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and the ups and downs of BFFs, makes Tale of Two Summers for a great read.

--Chris Freeman

VOYA
June 2006

This novel is written as a blog between two fifteen year old boys who have been best friends for ten years. Because it will be their first summer apart, Chuck, who is spending six weeks at a nearby university in a summer arts theatre camp, decided that a blog would be the best way to keep in touch. Hal is gay and recently “came out” to Chuck but not to anyone else and is prepared for a dull summer, looking forward to only a driver’s ed course and the prospect of getting his license. But then Henri Broussard, the son of a French diplomat, enters his life and Hal’s boring summer is suddenly transformed. Both boys are hoping to lose their virginity – Chuck with one of the divas in the musical and Hal with Henri.

The voice of each character is distinct and authentic as they share their deepest secrets and the thrilling anticipation of their pending relationships. Sex happens, and Sloan’s character do not couch it in euphemisms. Chuck and Hal chronicle this daily life in their blog, and what emerges is a genuine depiction of how two teenage boys view themselves and those around them. The characters are believable, and the blog enables them to bare their souls to one another. This book is for readers mature enough to handle some very direct, realistic and often-humorous entries about heterosexuality, homosexuality, masturbation and alcohol and marijuana use. This title would be ideal for discussion within Gay/Straight Alliance groups.

--Lois Parker-Hennison

At its most complex, one of the greatest frustrations of life lies in the inability to communicate. Sometimes we can't communicate because we can't find common ground. Sometimes we can't communicate because we're being pigheaded. And sometimes, we just don't understand that the rules have changed and we forgot to change with them. Whether we understand it or not, technology such as the internet has forced each of us to rethink the way we talk to each other. We create online profiles and identities. We use shorthand--ROFL, IMHO, BTW. We emote-- J >:-( ;-P. And without really knowing it, we've found a new language.

With a fairly steady stream of recent YA books seeking to embrace this new style of communication, centering on the way we IM and blog to each other, it would be easy to lump TALE OF TWO SUMMERS by Brian Sloan into that category. It would be easy and it would be a mistake. In Sloan's hands, our cyberspeak becomes less a way of keeping in touch and more a reflection of our deepest feelings and insecurities.

TALE OF TWO SUMMERS centers on Hal and Chuck, best friends for the past ten years, who are spending their first summer apart: Hal is staying home to take driver's ed while Chuck is off to a nearby theatre camp. Chuck starts a blog as a means for the two to stay in touch about their activities over the summer. In alternating posts, we watch as they expound on their romantic lives (Hal is falling for a French diplomat's son while Chuck struggles to get noticed by his leading lady in the musical they're performing together at camp).

While it's the first summer they've spent apart in a long time, it's also a summer for other firsts. This is the first summer since Hal came out to Chuck (after an unfortunate incident at New Year's involving a slightly drunken kiss). And the essence of that first marks the heart of this book as the two friends search for a new language to talk to one another. Hal's posts demonstrate an eagerness to share this side of himself with his closest friend while also trying not to cross a line of comfort and alienate his friend. Chuck is the yang to this yin, trying to show his support for his friend who is coming into his sexual identity and prove that things really haven't changed between them, although Chuck's language clearly indicates he hasn't figured out how to deal with this latest step in the evolution of their relationship.

Sloan perfectly captures the internet zeitgeist with his piercing portrayal of two friends grappling with changes—in their relationship to each other and in their burgeoning sexual lives—they barely understand themselves. He expertly carries the reader along on this journey of discovery that offers equal parts humor and heartfelt emotion.
TALE OF TWO SUMMERS is a great choice to kick off your summer reading list.

--Reviewed by Brian Farrey

Best friends since kindgergarten, Hal and Chuck will be spending a summer apart as Chuck heads off to theater camp and Hal remains behind to take Driver's Ed. They keep in touch through a private blog, with both 15-year olds freed by the fromat to be even more blunt, honest and soul-searching than they would be in person. Chuck's eccentric theatre camp pals make for interesting, mostly lighthearted story fodder for the blog, while Hal's raging crush on the mysterious and mercurial French exchange student, Henri, provides a summer drama for both Chuck (who's afraid his best friend will be heartbroken) and Hal (who desperately wants to have his first romance). Sloan's attention to detail is exemplified in the blog entries, which are complete with emoticons, acronymns, and careless punctuation. Sloan successfully keeps both voices distinct, and Hal and Chuck are ulimatley likable characters whose friendship feels genuine in its warmth. As breezy and ephemeral as many blogs themselves, this novel may satisfy readers looking for an alternative summer romance or the gay equivalent of the moneyed summer fun in Melissa del la Cruz's "Au Pairs" series.

--Reviewed by AS

For the first time in their history as best friends, Hal and Chuck will be spending the summer apart: Chuck to attend a summer theatre camp and Hal to stay in their hometown of Wheaton, MD to learn to drive. To ensure contact throughout their separation, Chuck sets up a private blog where the boys can post daily messages about their adventures (or lack thereof), the text of which constitutes this witty novel. Sloan succeeds at the dual voicing of the characters; from the first entries, the teens' distinct voices are clear. Much of their virtual conversation revolves around their summer romantic prospects and their pursuit of emotionally as well as physically meaningful relationships. This somewhat typical premise is complicated by the fact that Hal is gay and has newly outed himself to Chuck. As they compare their experiences, the boys are also working together to define what Hal's sexual identity means in the context of their friendship. Many of their entries invovle discussions of the physiological dimensions of intimacy, such as when Chuck asks, "Not to be crude or anything, but exactly how does a gay guy lose his virginity--is that actually possible?" Hal's answer is frank, explicit and endearing. Compared to Melvin Burgess' "Doing It" (Holt, 2004), this novel is less deliberately bawdy and more realistic, earthy and even sweet. Like David Levithan and Julie Ann Peters, Sloan is breaking ground among the greats of gay-themed young adult fiction.

--Amy S. Pattee, Simmons College, Boston

Chuck is straight, and Hal is gay. They have been best friends since the age of 5. Now, at 15, they must spend their first summer apart; Chuck has the lead in a musical show. They talk online through a blog, often several times a day, and they share every intimate detail of their lives, including romance and sex ("OMG...we friggin' made out!!!"). Hal hooks up with and has sex with Henri, a French foreign exchange student, but Henri's pot habit gets out of control. Chuck is caught between two young women, but what involves him most are rehearsals for the show and the build-up to opening night. As with any blog, the talk is often repetitive and trivial, and readers will race through the rambling interchanges, maybe even skip some. But the two contemporary voices are right-on: informal without being cute, supportive, irritable, funny and angry; intense about love, sex, drugs, family -- and especially about friendship.

--Hazel Rochman