✨A Hero's Guide to Summer Vacation (2025)
- 4rbooks
- Dec 8, 2025
- 3 min read
By Pablo Cartaya
4Rbooks 6/6 grades 6-9
Amazon 4.4/5 grade level 3-7
Goodreads 4.15/5
Common Sense Media 5/5 ages 8+
272 pages
Synopsis
It’s been a tough year for Gonzalo. The transition to middle school had been challenging, especially after the recent death of his father. His grades had slipped, he was seeing a counselor, and the other students avoided him because of his scary drawings and an emotional outburst or two.
His mother sent him to spend the summer with his grandfather, a famous author of a middle-school book series. Gonzalo is going to accompany his grandfather on a book tour to publicize the latest, and last novel in the series.
Instead of flying, his grandfather decides that he and Gonzalo need to drive across country in his 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass S convertible. They have an adventure visiting friends and family, telling stories, and learning to trust each other. They are joined by Gonzalo’s mother for the last leg of the journey and the three find ways to process their feelings and emotions over their individual and shared losses.
What Gonzalo worried would be the worst summer of his life turns into a life-changing and memory-making trip that will shape his present and his future.
Parental Guidelines: low
Gonzalo is processing the death of his father the previous year. He does with drawings that are often dark and scary.
Alberto, Gonzalo’s grandfather, tells Gonzalo the story of an attempted escape from Cuba. The boat was overturned and his mother was never seen again.
Alberto’s father disappeared and never returned. No one knows if it was a choice or government/military forces.
Certain sections of dialogue, and a letter, are written in Spanish. A translation is not always provided.
Recommendation
This book grew on me the more I read and I now consider it one of the best books of the year. There were many layers to the story, and the way it was written was intriguing, but could be confusing to struggling readers. It bounces back and forth between the present-day action, Grandfather’s memories of his time in Cuba, events in the novels the grandfather wrote, and a narrator who discusses storytelling.
The point of view is mostly Gonzalo’s, but his grandfather steps in to tell stories of Cuba, and there’s a section or two told by Gonzalo’s mother. There is also the “unreliable” narrator who pops in to discuss how a story is constructed and what is important about the next section.
Though there is nothing in the book that would make it inappropriate for elementary age children, the Cuba history, themes of processing death, and the lessons in story telling could make it a challenging book. Skilled 5-6th grade readers could handle it, but it’s more of a middle-school read.
This is an excellent novel for any school or classroom library. English teachers could use it for a case study on writing a story, and counselors would find it useful for students suffering loss and learning how to process it. I had not been familiar with Mr. Cartaya’s work, but I will definitely purchase some of his other novels in the near future.
This is the 200th book I’ve reviewed on this blog. I’m glad it was a great one. I purchased it at one of my favorite independent bookstores, Warwicks in La Jolla, CA.
