What do you think?
Rate this book
The Telltale Summer of Tina C.
Already unsure of herself, thirteen-year-old Tina is thrown into deeper confusion when she learns that her recently divorced parents both plan to remarry.
- GenresFictionYoung Adult
10 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 1, 2012
Wonderfully bizarre book in which nothing much happens but the prose is snappy and colorful! Tina is a typical preteen whose dead set on improving her appearance and ironing out her flaws as if this were the secret to improving her summer. Which is rather rocky at the moment. Her mother , a former beauty , has traded looks for a bohemian ( about as bohemian as it got in the late 70's ) lifestyle - she lives with a younger man who does the cooking *gasp!* while she makes wire jewelry. As for her wealthy father, he's making a fool out of himself with an Hungarian phony named Rosebud. ( think Zsa Zsa Gabor. ) Tina has started a self improvement club - which has the most depressing name in the world - The Saturday Sad Souls Club and they sit around trying out new beauty products and drinking the low calorie drinks that she whips up in a blender. They even take on alliterative names accenting their flaws ,sparked by handsome Tiger ( her crush/nemesis )who calls her Tina C the Teenage twitch( for a habit of twitching her nose whenever she's nervous.) Other members include Ina the insomniac , Karla the Kleptomaniac and Cokie the Curvature. The book culminates with Tina having a meltdown when her one good feature, 'long butterscotch locks' go frizzy nearly spoiling her 'date' with a polite foreigner named Johann. A thoroughly enjoyable read! For more 80's book reviews check out my site -http://cliqueypizza.wordpress.com/
December 28, 2016
This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.
Tina Carstairs is twelve years old, and considers herself a Sad Soul. She and her friends have even formed a club - the Saturday Sad Souls Club - devoted to the improvement of their most egregious flaws. But even though Tina has a twitch that flares up when she’s angry or anxious, that’s not the biggest of her problems. Her mother walked out on the family, moved away, and met a new man. Her father is planning to marry an overly sweet young woman named Rosebud. And Tina’s friends have invited a new girl into their club despite the fact that she doesn’t seem to have any flaws. The only thing that might save Tina’s summer from total disaster is Johann, a sixteen-year-old Dutch tourist she meets in New York City.
The illustration on its front cover and even the blurb on the back of it reduce this book to a frivolous story about a misunderstood adolescent. I realized very early on in the story, however, that this book has much more depth than that. The Telltale Summer of Tina C. is a well-written slice-of-life story about growing up in the 1970s suburbs. Though Tina’s parents are divorced, she is troubled by the idea of blended families, and outright disturbed by the fact that her mother’s new boyfriend does the cooking, while she works all day. Though Tina has some angst - about her twitch and the boys who tease her for it - her life is pretty well sheltered until she has the opportunity to visit New York. The story arc really resembles a coming of age story more than anything else, and Tina is a well-developed, flawed, but lovable protagonist whose emotional experiences are more important than the individual points of the plot.
As I read, I found myself wondering how a twelve-year-old girl of 1975 might react to certain things about this story. Would it seem unusual, or dangerous, for example, for a girl Tina’s age to spend time with a sixteen-year-old boy in a museum, without adult supervision? In 2012, parents would go nuts, I think, imagining all the ways in which an older boy might take advantage of a younger girl, but was society the same way back then? Or did parents feel safer? I also wondered if the underlying discomfort with divorce and remarriage reflected the author’s attitude, or Tina’s, and whether the average reader of this book would have felt the same sense of confusion and dread, or if she would take it in better stride.
I really don’t think a book like this one could be published today. It’s so innocent, and I can imagine a 21st century twelve-year-old finding it tedious and slow-moving. On the other hand, it’s one of the best Apple paperbacks I’ve ever read, and kids who are weary of the darkness of contemporary YA might like to give it a shot. It’s out of print, but copies are available online.
Tina Carstairs is twelve years old, and considers herself a Sad Soul. She and her friends have even formed a club - the Saturday Sad Souls Club - devoted to the improvement of their most egregious flaws. But even though Tina has a twitch that flares up when she’s angry or anxious, that’s not the biggest of her problems. Her mother walked out on the family, moved away, and met a new man. Her father is planning to marry an overly sweet young woman named Rosebud. And Tina’s friends have invited a new girl into their club despite the fact that she doesn’t seem to have any flaws. The only thing that might save Tina’s summer from total disaster is Johann, a sixteen-year-old Dutch tourist she meets in New York City.
The illustration on its front cover and even the blurb on the back of it reduce this book to a frivolous story about a misunderstood adolescent. I realized very early on in the story, however, that this book has much more depth than that. The Telltale Summer of Tina C. is a well-written slice-of-life story about growing up in the 1970s suburbs. Though Tina’s parents are divorced, she is troubled by the idea of blended families, and outright disturbed by the fact that her mother’s new boyfriend does the cooking, while she works all day. Though Tina has some angst - about her twitch and the boys who tease her for it - her life is pretty well sheltered until she has the opportunity to visit New York. The story arc really resembles a coming of age story more than anything else, and Tina is a well-developed, flawed, but lovable protagonist whose emotional experiences are more important than the individual points of the plot.
As I read, I found myself wondering how a twelve-year-old girl of 1975 might react to certain things about this story. Would it seem unusual, or dangerous, for example, for a girl Tina’s age to spend time with a sixteen-year-old boy in a museum, without adult supervision? In 2012, parents would go nuts, I think, imagining all the ways in which an older boy might take advantage of a younger girl, but was society the same way back then? Or did parents feel safer? I also wondered if the underlying discomfort with divorce and remarriage reflected the author’s attitude, or Tina’s, and whether the average reader of this book would have felt the same sense of confusion and dread, or if she would take it in better stride.
I really don’t think a book like this one could be published today. It’s so innocent, and I can imagine a 21st century twelve-year-old finding it tedious and slow-moving. On the other hand, it’s one of the best Apple paperbacks I’ve ever read, and kids who are weary of the darkness of contemporary YA might like to give it a shot. It’s out of print, but copies are available online.
June 21, 2022
"all the cute-looking boys were 'taken' by the popular girls. All the other girls were leftovers and had to make do with whatever boys were left over. And I hated the idea of being a leftover. I was still hoping I wouldn't be. And yet...I was, I was."
Damn, Apple paperbacks really just filled my childhood with amazing books that delved into all the topics that plagued my own adolescence headspace.
Tina's living with her dad, brother, and grandmother in the suburbs after her parents separate (and later divorce, without telling their kids.) Her mom took off to Mexico and now lives in NYC with a man. Tina forms a club—The Saturday Sad Souls Club—to work on improving herself, along with a group of neighborhood friends. But when a confident new-to-town girl joins their group, misunderstandings, jealousy, and insecurity run rampant and the club implodes.
Meanwhile, Tina is trying to navigate her quickly changing family. Her dad announces he's remarrying and the kids find out that her mother already married her live-in boyfriend (who they meet for the first time in chapter one.) Just some terrible parenting going on, and poor Tina is right on the cusp of puberty, trying to deal with everything changing.
Really beautifully written, and lots of "kids alone in the city" moments that always peppered books in the late 70s and 80s.
Damn, Apple paperbacks really just filled my childhood with amazing books that delved into all the topics that plagued my own adolescence headspace.
Tina's living with her dad, brother, and grandmother in the suburbs after her parents separate (and later divorce, without telling their kids.) Her mom took off to Mexico and now lives in NYC with a man. Tina forms a club—The Saturday Sad Souls Club—to work on improving herself, along with a group of neighborhood friends. But when a confident new-to-town girl joins their group, misunderstandings, jealousy, and insecurity run rampant and the club implodes.
Meanwhile, Tina is trying to navigate her quickly changing family. Her dad announces he's remarrying and the kids find out that her mother already married her live-in boyfriend (who they meet for the first time in chapter one.) Just some terrible parenting going on, and poor Tina is right on the cusp of puberty, trying to deal with everything changing.
Really beautifully written, and lots of "kids alone in the city" moments that always peppered books in the late 70s and 80s.
August 27, 2019
This book was so much fun reading as a kid. I have not done a reread so no long review but who could forget Karla the kleptomaniac? I was really young when I read this and actually learned, through this book, what a kleptomaniac was! So it was educational as well!
September 6, 2025
I read this book as a kid, but while I remembered the cover and title, I didn't remember the plotline at all. This book was jarringly realistic. Tina is the same age my daughter is now. (12.5). Tina is utterly relatable - she's pretty but in that awkward preteen stage, her parents are divorced because her mom was a hippie who had to find herself. Most of Tina's friends also have divorced parents. The kids are navigating that nightmare while trying to grow up. It's a heartbreaking time capsule of what it was like being a kid in the 70s and 80s.
Tina is a brat. So are her friends. They're mean to each other, boys say mean things to them and they are judgemental.
But Tina ends up spending some time in NYC, with her mom, Midge and she grows. I loved this book immensely. It's real.
Tina is a brat. So are her friends. They're mean to each other, boys say mean things to them and they are judgemental.
But Tina ends up spending some time in NYC, with her mom, Midge and she grows. I loved this book immensely. It's real.
April 4, 2010
the book was ok, about a girl and her brother taking a trip to their mother and doing "things"... stay tuned
March 27, 2023
Because Danielle Can't Resist Vintage Apple Paperbacks
Picked up cheap in an auxiliary shop; will donate to similar shop. It's actually a quietly subversive story in many ways for being written in the '70s--Tina thinks something must be wrong with Peter, her mother's new husband, because he does the cooking and cleaning; her father realizes that he doesn't actually love his new fiancee but simply wants back the role of provider and protector after Tina and Arthur's mom left him. The main antagonists of the story, Tiger and Karla, are quite humanized as well, especially Karla--who genuinely means well but is willing to do anything and abandon anyone in order to have friends. Ina, Tina's overweight best friend, eventually realizes that her insomnia (and late-night snacking as a result) is due to her anxiety over her impending stepfather.
I'm making it sound better than it is, mostly because the story itself is quite dull with little action, and Tina (the narrator) is rather insufferable for the majority of the book. However, she does experience a reasonable amount of growth before the ending.
The "This Was Written in the '70s" Department:
- riding an elevator by yourself, without an operator, is weird and potentially dangerous
- losing your brother in a museum because you have no way to contact him
- cold cereal is frowned upon as breakfast
Picked up cheap in an auxiliary shop; will donate to similar shop. It's actually a quietly subversive story in many ways for being written in the '70s--Tina thinks something must be wrong with Peter, her mother's new husband, because he does the cooking and cleaning; her father realizes that he doesn't actually love his new fiancee but simply wants back the role of provider and protector after Tina and Arthur's mom left him. The main antagonists of the story, Tiger and Karla, are quite humanized as well, especially Karla--who genuinely means well but is willing to do anything and abandon anyone in order to have friends. Ina, Tina's overweight best friend, eventually realizes that her insomnia (and late-night snacking as a result) is due to her anxiety over her impending stepfather.
I'm making it sound better than it is, mostly because the story itself is quite dull with little action, and Tina (the narrator) is rather insufferable for the majority of the book. However, she does experience a reasonable amount of growth before the ending.
The "This Was Written in the '70s" Department:
- riding an elevator by yourself, without an operator, is weird and potentially dangerous
- losing your brother in a museum because you have no way to contact him
- cold cereal is frowned upon as breakfast
October 7, 2025
Ugh…more like Tina the Teenage Twat. She’s horrible.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews