The title of the book is The First Last Day. The author is Dorian Cirrone. This book is about a girl named Haleigh who never wants the summer to end. But she has to be careful what she wishes for because she finds a set of oil paints and decides to use them. When she uses them, she makes a wish that the summer will never end. The wish comes true. But instead of it being a good wish, it turns into a bad wish and the same day repeats over and over and over again. Haleigh gets bored because every day she has to do the same thing. She hangs out with her best friend Kevin, but she also finds out that her mom may be pregnant and Kevin’s grandma gets a stroke every night. When that keeps on repeating, Haleigh tries to undo the wish so that she can meet her baby brother or sister. Kevin, her best friend, helps her by figuring out where the oil paints came from and how to undo the spell. This book takes place on the New Jersey shore in a beach town. I believe this is happening in modern times because it has a boardwalk and cell phones.
Haleigh in kind, determined, and fearful. She is kind because she never gets extremely angry. When she knows Kevin wants a DVD disc to watch a movie, the next day she takes her dad’s wallet and buys the movie for Kevin because she cares a lot about Kevin. She is determined because when the day keeps on getting repeated over and over, she doesn’t give up. She just keeps on going. Although it’s not that easy for her, at the end everything still turns out alright. Finally, she is fearful because she thinks that when the summer ends she won’t see Kevin again and this makes her a little worrisome. This is why Haleigh is kind, determined, and fearful.
This book is mainly about Haleigh wanting the summer to never end, but also not wanting to repeat the same day over and over. One part of the book that I thought was interesting was when Kevin jumped out with a cow suit and they started saying puns about cows. It was really funny. During this scene, Haleigh said a pun and this is what it is, “I eyed him up and down. ‘I see you beefed up your wardrobe.’” This helps me understand that Haleigh is very funny because she said a pun that I laughed at when I was reading it. One thing that I thought was pretty interesting was when Haleigh and Kevin were writing down all of the suspects for who gave Haleigh the oil pants. Kevin kept thinking that it was Marty the Magician. When they asked Marty, he said no. So Kevin was wrong. This was important because their plan backfired and I can imagine being shocked when this happened.
I really enjoyed the book because it was hilarious. It made me laugh out loud. The reason why is because the book had so many puns and the characters both had a really good sense of humor. Another reason that I liked the book was because there were moments that really touched me. For example, when Haleigh felt sad because Kevin’s grandma kept on having a stroke. I would definitely recommend this book. I would recommend this book for kids who like sad, funny, and happy stories because it’s a combination of all of those put together. It’s also about time travel and magic and I think how they put reality and magic together was very cool. This book is a little bit like The Invisible Day because Haleigh is also as determined as Billie to undo magic. I would give this book three stars because it was pretty good but I didn’t love it. It just didn’t interest me as much as some other books.