52 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn PainterNothing Like the Movies
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “Wes”
Wes goes for a run and talks to Sarah in his headphones along the way. They discuss Wes’s upcoming interview. Wes admits that he’s nervous because he hasn’t shared this part of his life with anyone. Sarah reminds him how much therapy helped their mom and suggests that he treat the interview like a free session. The siblings also discuss the upcoming sale of their childhood home. Wes is sad to lose the house but also understands that it’s time.
After his run, Wes goes to the gym, where he runs into Liz. Wes is overwhelmed by love for her as they talk. They part, and Wes works out while thinking about his and Liz’s relationship. Then, he heads to the interview. He’s surprised by how controlled Liz is when she shows up and tells her that he’s “kind of intimidated by how cool [she is] now” (186).
Chapter 20 Summary: “Liz”
Liz doesn’t know how to respond to Wes’s compliment. She remembers how much she used to want his approval. They chat for a bit before Clark shows up and starts filming. Liz begins asking the questions that Lilith wrote for her. However, when the questions become more personal, she realizes that she has to stop. She asks Clark to take over and dismisses herself after Wes reveals that he knew he had to move back to Omaha when his mom disappeared “and wouldn’t come home” (196).
Chapter 21 Summary: “Wes”
Clark takes over the interview. Wes feels nervous at first but then realizes that he’s glad Liz left. He feels better telling his story to someone who didn’t know him at the time. He reveals that his mom’s grief was too overwhelming for her to care for Sarah, so he moved home to take care of the family. He began working and covering the family finances. Meanwhile, he became reliant on alcohol. He didn’t return to baseball until his friend Michael Young found him drunk alone at the house one night and dragged him to the stadium to pitch. Playing again made Wes feel better for the first time since his dad’s death. Thereafter, he devoted himself to getting back on the Bruins. He drove cross-country with Sarah for tryouts and made it back onto the team.
After the interview, Wes texts Sarah about what happened. On his way to class, he realizes that he feels better than he expected to.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Liz”
Clark meets up with Sarah in the production office after the interview. He argues that she should forgive Wes and give him a second chance because he was going through a hard time when they broke up. Then, he gives Liz the interview footage and encourages her to watch it. Watching the tape, Liz is overwhelmed by how much she didn’t know about Wes’s life at the time. Although they were in touch, she didn’t realize that he’d taken so much on with his family.
Liz brings the interview footage to Lilith and explains her reasons for having Clark take over. Lilith is supportive and praises her for the interview they got. She then urges Liz to post her most recent Reel of Wes playing.
Wes texts Liz to see if she’s okay. She feels guilty, knowing that she should be the one checking in on him. That night, Liz eats dinner with Clark, and he asks if she minds if he and Wes become friends. He again suggests that Liz has been too hard on Wes. Liz gets upset, bursting out that Wes cheated on her and that his grief doesn’t excuse his betrayal.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Wes”
Wes meets with Ross and Lilith after practice. Lilith thanks him for his interview. She asks if he would be willing to let her and her team film him at his house when he returns to Omaha to close it up and hand over the keys. Wes consents. He calls Sarah, and she and his mom agree to the plan, too.
Back at the dorm, Wes and AJ order pizza and talk about baseball, the documentary, and Liz.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Liz”
Liz, Lilith, and Clark meet to talk about going to Omaha the next day. Liz is shocked that Wes agreed to the plan. On the way, she thinks about her life in Omaha. She hasn’t been back since she and Wes broke up two years ago because she didn’t want to see him. They grew up next door to each other, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him. Lyrics from songs she knows play in her mind on the flight.
Liz’s dad and stepmom, Helena Buxbaum, meet the group at the airport. They all have dinner at Liz’s parents’ home. Afterward, Liz’s parents exclaim at how great her friends are. Liz feels glad to be home and decides to take a late-night run to see her mom. She runs to the cemetery.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Wes”
Wes visits the “Secret Area” behind his house. He feels his dad’s presence there and wishes that he could talk to him the way Liz used to talk to her mom at the cemetery. He wants to ask for his dad’s forgiveness. Realizing that he doesn’t want to turn over the last set of keys, he goes to the cemetery and leaves the keys near Stuart’s headstone. However, he’s suddenly overcome with guilt because he still believes he killed his father. The day before his first UCLA exhibition game, Wes talked to Stuart on the phone and told him that he didn’t have to come to California to see him play. Stuart became angry with Wes, as he often did about baseball. Wes grew volatile, too, and yelled at Stuart, insisting that he didn’t want him at the game and that he often ruined baseball for him. Stuart didn’t say anything and hung up. Remembering this conversation, Wes decides that he needs a drink.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Liz”
Liz talks to her mom at the cemetery, apologizing for being away so long. She starts crying, unsure why she’s upset. Then, she starts thinking about Wes’s dad and runs to Stuart’s headstone. She talks to him for a moment, surprised by all the baseballs on his grave. Then, she notices a set of keys in the dirt. She texts Wes to let him know that she found them. Wes calls her, and Liz immediately knows that he’s drunk. He starts blaming himself and saying how tired he is. Liz considers finding him to see if he’s okay but ends the call. Then, at 2:00 am, she goes to Wes’s house and finds him lying drunk on the floor and having a nightmare. He screams that he needs to help his dad, and Liz tries reminding him that Stuart is gone. Finally, she gets him to wake up and look at her.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Wes”
Wes realizes where he is and that Liz is with him. She tells him to forgive himself, although he’s never told her that he blames himself for Stuart’s death. They move closer to each other and share a fleeting kiss. Wes doesn’t fully commit to the moment, afraid of pushing Liz away. After she leaves, he lies awake, overcome by his desire to be with Liz again.
In the morning, Sarah texts Wes to say that she and their mom are coming to the house to take pictures before locking up. When Liz arrives, Wes takes her aside and thanks her for saving him the night before. Then, they make plans to meet at Emerson Field, Wes’s high school stadium. Beforehand, he visits the Secret Area one last time before saying goodbye to the house.
Chapters 19-27 Analysis
The events of Chapters 19-27 lead the protagonists to a series of crossroads that compel them toward personal growth, healing, and forgiveness. Throughout the novel thus far, both Liz and Wes have been facing emotional challenges in their personal lives. For Liz, her unresolved feelings for Wes complicate her ability to focus on excelling in her classes and her internship and make peace with the past. For Wes, his unresolved grief and guilt over his father’s death complicate his ability to open up to Liz and succeed in baseball and his academics. Therefore, the characters’ respective and overlapping experiences in Omaha grant them a sense of clarity and challenge them to confront their heartbreak to heal from it.
For Wes, returning home to Omaha marks a pivotal turning point in his Journey Toward Healing and Forgiveness, which supports the theme of Personal Growth and Coming-of-Age Journeys. Although he “absolutely [doesn’t] want to say goodbye to [his childhood] house” (195), he comes to embrace the experience in the wake of his interview with Liz and Clark. The interview also ushers Wes toward change, as the experience compels him to confront his trauma and grief for the first time. Afterward, he realizes that “just talk[ing] through the entire nightmare” feels “like a win” and grants him a sense of closure (206). This experience empowers him to return home to Omaha with a positive mindset. Although the return trip is not free of emotional challenges, it helps Wes confront the pain he’s been compartmentalizing for the past two years. He not only visits his dad’s grave but also begins to acknowledge his guilt over his dad’s death. Wes’s experience going to the cemetery brings the narrative into the past. The resulting flashback in Chapter 25 gestures toward Wes’s previously unarticulated remorse for having rejected and upset his father just before his heart attack. While Wes does drink alone and experiences an intense and vivid nightmare as a result of his internal unrest, these experiences are also part of his personal growth and healing journey. He is learning that he must move through the pain of his sorrow, loss, and regret to overcome it.
For Liz, returning home to Omaha grants her the opportunity to self-reflect. Liz visits her parents for the first time in two years. She also goes to see her mom’s headstone at the cemetery. These experiences are symbolic of Liz’s confrontation with the past and further contribute to the theme of personal growth and coming-of-age journeys. She is returning to the settings that she previously avoided out of self-preservation. Indeed, when she visits her mom in Chapter 26, Liz sits “on the ground, on top of a pile of leaves, sobbing [her] eyes out as [she tells her] mother every tiny thing [that has] happened to [her] since [she] left for college two years ago” (242). This is a cathartic moment for Liz and parallels Wes’s experience of sharing his sorrow and pain with Clark during the interview. The novel demonstrates that when Liz begins to speak about her trauma, loss, heartbreak, and remorse, she can own these experiences and emotions as part of her story; in turn, Liz—like Wes—can better accept herself and pursue healing and renewal in a more concerted manner. Confronting the painful aspects of their pasts, as the novel continues to show, will allow them to restore their romantic dynamic with each other.
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