On December 7th, 2023 Netflix released a teen drama movie adaptation of the book My Life With the Walter Boys by Ali Novak. My Life With the Walter Boys or some would say the Western version of The Summer I Turned Pretty features Jackie Howard whose mom, a famous fashion designer, dad, and older sister all tragically get killed in a car accident. After finding out this tragic news her uncle takes Jackie from her privileged, quiet life in Manhattan New York to a chaotic, large farm in rural Colorado. Her “new family” consists of two teenage boys around her age, who have a history of fighting over girls. Along with these two main boys are 8 other kids living in the house. Two of the eight are cousins of the Walter boys. All the kids are boys except one little girl who is scared of being anything close to girly in fear of not fitting in and being made fun of.
Cole is the stereotypical “bad boy” who doesn’t seem to care for much and has been acting out after he suffered a leg injury that ended his football career. Alex, the other brother in this messy love triangle, is more quiet and is often in the shadow of Cole. After Cole started getting involved with Page, Alex’s (now ex) girlfriend, they understandably have not been getting along.
While any girl in the Walter Boys town would call Jackie lucky to be living with the two most wanted boys in their high school, I feel they have put Jackie in a very unfair position. Her whole family dies and she is immediately thrown into a home of basically strangers and right into their drama.
Jackie is trying to grieve and process the traumatic change of her entire life. She is confused and vulnerable and it is not the time for the two boys to start trying to compete for her. Not to mention two boys who live with her. However, after having such huge alterations made to her life she never seemed to show much emotion on how this affected her. I feel like not showing this emotion took away from the storyline. It’s harder to connect and feel for the charters when they’re not opening up to you as well. However, this could have been an attempt to hide how messed up the timing of this love triangle was. After all, she barely knew anyone.
Not that all this has been confusing enough, but on Thanksgiving when Jackie has finally started to settle in, her uncle comes back and gives her the choice to live with him in New York without any consultation with the family she was currently staying with. Now Jackie has to balance the death of her family, the toxic relationship she has with two of the boys in her new house and who she wants to live with.
Even though Page was a substantial part of the show, with her being the main reason Alex and Cole despise each other, they didn’t show her very often. Even if they added a few flashbacks of her that would have added so much to the depth of the show. The same is said with Jackie’s old life. I wish they had more flashbacks about her life in New York or started the show before her family died to get that emotional impact and transition she had to go with. Instead, the show very lightly touched on the fact her whole family died and I even forgot about it a few times while watching. You would think an event like that would be more important to the plot.
Overall, the plot line could have been developed so much more and the acting could have been heavily improved. There wasn’t a lot that made My Life With the Walter Boys stand out to me.
