Title: Summer’s Edge
Author: Dana Mele
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pages: 336
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Spending
a summer weekend at the Hartfords’ lake house has been an annual ritual for
high schoolers and childhood friends, Emily Joiner; her best friend Chelsea;
her other best friend, Kennedy Ellis Hartford, who is also Chelsea’s
ex-girlfriend; Emily’s twin, Ryan, and Ryan’s best friend, Chase. But things
have changed now.
Exactly
a year after the lake house burned down, trapping Emily inside and killing her,
her friends, Chelsea, Kennedy, Ryan, Chase, and Chase’s girlfriend of two
years, Mila, have gathered together again. They have all been invited to the
grand reopening of the lake house. The survivors will gather at the lake house
on the anniversary of the tragedy of Emily’s death, after a year of no contact
whatsoever with any of the others. They will spend one last weekend together
before they all go off to college.
But
the reunion is fraught with tension. They are all wary of each other, as they
trade grievances and accusations. Chelsea finds the others, except Ryan,
untrustworthy and their explanations and statements fraught with lies. And then
Chelsea begins to hear Emily’s voice.
Everyone
believes that Ryan wants revenge. But is the truth as simple as that?
The
story is written in the first-person present tense PoV of Chelsea in the
present known as the Summer of Egrets, the PoV of Kennedy two years ago in the
Summer of Swallows, and Emily one year ago in the Summer of Swans. It was Emily
who had the idea of naming the summers they spent at the lake house after
birds. If the summer of egrets sounds a little too much like regrets, there’s a
reason why.
Besides
the three main PoVs, there are short chapters, the longest a mere 106 words,
from an unknown PoV, alternating with every chapter in Chelsea’s account. This
unknown PoV seems to have vengeance on their mind. All the action in the book,
in each of the three PoVs, takes place on just one night, June 17, in different
years in each of the accounts.
The
book is named after the Hartfords’ boat, Summer’s Edge, where some of the most
critical action takes place.
WHAT I
LIKED:
The
author does a good job of creating an atmosphere of menace, especially in the
scene with Chelsea in the attic and later in the cellar. The tarot cards, the
accusations and counter accusations and the unsettling game of Truth or Dare,
all add up to a sense of uneasy and brisk action in the story.
The
characters are all friends, but there is enough relationship drama to create
trouble for everyone. And when Chase introduces Mila to his friends for the
very first time, the friendship dynamic gets all messed up. Mila is
particularly annoying, as is often the case when an unknown person is initiated
into a group where the dynamic is already settled and accepted.
Kennedy’s
PoV introduces a paranormal element into the story.
The
writing was nice. Here’s a sample of quotes I liked:
Love
changes things. It redraws the map.
There
are a lot of ways to be haunted. A place, a person, a memory.
No one
who hates flowers haunts a garden.
In a
hit and run, it isn’t the hit that’s the crime. It’s the run.
Parts
of the truth as just as deceitful as blatant lies.
WHAT I
DIDN’T:
Except
for Ryan, I didn’t find any of the characters likeable. They claim that they
would die for the others, but they would just as soon be ready to kill their
friends too.
The
voices of the three PoVs sounded exactly alike. There was nothing by way of
tone or vocabulary to let us know whose head we were in.
WHAT
DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:
I
found it odd that the author gave Emily and Ryan surnames, and Kennedy’s full
name is repeated several times. But Chase, Mila and Chelsea don’t get a mention
of their surnames even once. Also Chelsea and Chase sound too alike. The author
should have come up with names that didn’t sound so similar.
ALL
SAID AND DONE: The book is a delicious blend of the
paranormal with the mundane reality of how mistakes have the capacity of
destroying young lives and promising futures.
