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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Oh boy, this book!!
First of all, I think it’s important to state that I personally don’t think this is a standard romance. Yes, it has a HEA but I don’t think it’s a typical HEA, and Liv’s journey to her happy ending was ROUGH! I would class this more as Women’s Fiction. I make the distinction because to me a standard romance will have it’s ups and downs, there may be some other love interests involved but I don’t see a MC being in love with more than one person as a classic romance.
That’s just my classification and not a standard rule!
So not a standard romance in my opinion but it was a good read. It was very emotional and I was really invested in the story overall. The setting was lovely as well. I’ve always wanted to go to Cornwall, and reading this made me feel the need to move that up a bit.
Liv and Finn’s beginning was so sweet and had that lovely magical first love feeling to it. I wonder if tragedy hadn’t struck would they have maintained that connection? It felt a lot like they bonded over trauma. I was shouting for them during each of those early summers they saw each other but as those summers went on it was easy to see the cracks in their relationship. They were both in such different places in their lives, and even if Liv was using Michael as an excuse to stay in St. Agnes, she was also trying to heal. I think Finn had too much trauma from his childhood to ever consider that Liv needed the ties to her parents home in order to heal. It was all very sad, but they were so young, I think the way things went was the only way they could go at that time in their lives.
And then came Tom!
I think it was very important for both Liv and Finn to have other relationships, but I wasn’t expecting one of them to find another great love. Liv absolutely deserved to find someone like Tom. For some reason I felt like Finn messed her about, which could be seen as a stretch but it just felt like, even though he loved her, she was never put first. Tom, with his own trauma, had a way of making Liv a priority, and she did a wonderful job of giving him space to deal with his life being turned upside-down. I ended up really rooting for these two, I knew what was coming but I still wanted them to have their HEA, and I guess they did, but it just ended too soon.
An then came the epilogues!
I feel like the bits with Tom shouldn’t have been in the epilogue, they were poignant and heartbreaking and that just doesn’t feel right in an epilogue. Maybe Toon was using the epilogues as a way of saying that everything that happened after ‘This Summer — The Seventh Summer’ was a happy ending of sorts. Even when the heartbreaking happens, love was felt all round.
I will definitely read more Paige Toon but I feel like I’ll need to be in the mood for a good cry, this book was so emotional and it totally bummed me out, but in that, ‘Oh I needed that big cry!’ kind of way!
Something I love in a book is a playlist, I enjoyed the playlist in this book a lot and it did a great job in capturing first love.
Seven Summers playlist:
Sweater Weather — The Neighbourhood
Solid — Liily
Figure It Out — Royal Blood
Stars on CCTV — Hard-Fi
Need You Tonight — INSX
Solar Power — Lorde
7 — Catfish and the Bottlemen
‘Tis the Damn Season — Taylor Swift
Go with the Flow — Queens of the Stone Age
I Need My Girl — The National
Ready to Start — Arcade Fire
Stay — Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko
Space & Time — Wolf Alice
7 Minutes — Dean Lewis
Michael — Franz Ferdinand
TV — Billie Eilish
The Beach II — Wolf Alice
Never Tear Us Apart — INXS
22 — Taylor Swift
Fire — Kasabian
Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors — Editors
Saturn — Sleeping At Last
The Boys of Summer — The Ataris
Here Comes the Sun — The Beatles
First of all, I think it’s important to state that I personally don’t think this is a standard romance. Yes, it has a HEA but I don’t think it’s a typical HEA, and Liv’s journey to her happy ending was ROUGH! I would class this more as Women’s Fiction. I make the distinction because to me a standard romance will have it’s ups and downs, there may be some other love interests involved but I don’t see a MC being in love with more than one person as a classic romance.
That’s just my classification and not a standard rule!
So not a standard romance in my opinion but it was a good read. It was very emotional and I was really invested in the story overall. The setting was lovely as well. I’ve always wanted to go to Cornwall, and reading this made me feel the need to move that up a bit.
Liv and Finn’s beginning was so sweet and had that lovely magical first love feeling to it. I wonder if tragedy hadn’t struck would they have maintained that connection? It felt a lot like they bonded over trauma. I was shouting for them during each of those early summers they saw each other but as those summers went on it was easy to see the cracks in their relationship. They were both in such different places in their lives, and even if Liv was using Michael as an excuse to stay in St. Agnes, she was also trying to heal. I think Finn had too much trauma from his childhood to ever consider that Liv needed the ties to her parents home in order to heal. It was all very sad, but they were so young, I think the way things went was the only way they could go at that time in their lives.
And then came Tom!
I think it was very important for both Liv and Finn to have other relationships, but I wasn’t expecting one of them to find another great love. Liv absolutely deserved to find someone like Tom. For some reason I felt like Finn messed her about, which could be seen as a stretch but it just felt like, even though he loved her, she was never put first. Tom, with his own trauma, had a way of making Liv a priority, and she did a wonderful job of giving him space to deal with his life being turned upside-down. I ended up really rooting for these two, I knew what was coming but I still wanted them to have their HEA, and I guess they did, but it just ended too soon.
An then came the epilogues!
I feel like the bits with Tom shouldn’t have been in the epilogue, they were poignant and heartbreaking and that just doesn’t feel right in an epilogue. Maybe Toon was using the epilogues as a way of saying that everything that happened after ‘This Summer — The Seventh Summer’ was a happy ending of sorts. Even when the heartbreaking happens, love was felt all round.
I will definitely read more Paige Toon but I feel like I’ll need to be in the mood for a good cry, this book was so emotional and it totally bummed me out, but in that, ‘Oh I needed that big cry!’ kind of way!
Something I love in a book is a playlist, I enjoyed the playlist in this book a lot and it did a great job in capturing first love.
Seven Summers playlist:
Sweater Weather — The Neighbourhood
Solid — Liily
Figure It Out — Royal Blood
Stars on CCTV — Hard-Fi
Need You Tonight — INSX
Solar Power — Lorde
7 — Catfish and the Bottlemen
‘Tis the Damn Season — Taylor Swift
Go with the Flow — Queens of the Stone Age
I Need My Girl — The National
Ready to Start — Arcade Fire
Stay — Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko
Space & Time — Wolf Alice
7 Minutes — Dean Lewis
Michael — Franz Ferdinand
TV — Billie Eilish
The Beach II — Wolf Alice
Never Tear Us Apart — INXS
22 — Taylor Swift
Fire — Kasabian
Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors — Editors
Saturn — Sleeping At Last
The Boys of Summer — The Ataris
Here Comes the Sun — The Beatles
There is something about Paige Toon's books that tend to leave me an emotional mess by the end of them, and this was no exception. The story follows Liv and features her love story set over Seven Summers as the title suggests. Which gives a One Day vibe, only its a whole summer instead of a singular date, and the story flitters between past, present and future.
As with all of Paige's books you find yourself fully immersed in the settings, as if you could be there yourself. Such a wonderful storyteller
hopeful
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was a good book and really had me hooked. It really struck me to see real challenges of relationships and the trauma of the characters to have a real effect that I felt tied into as the reader .
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Seven Summers is a heartfelt romance that sweeps you away to the Cornish coast and does not let go. Liv’s story, told across summers past and present, is filled with love, grief and the impossible choices that come with both. There are tender moments that will make you smile and gut-punch scenes that will leave you misty-eyed. The emotional weight of the story is balanced beautifully with Paige Toon’s gift for creating characters you want to root for.
I liked Liv and Finn, but I truly loved Liv and Tom. Their relationship felt natural and full of hope, and while I understood the story was always going to circle back to Finn, a part of me desperately wanted it to end with Tom. That tension is what kept me turning the pages, torn between the nostalgia of the past and the promise of a future. The epilogue completely broke me and gave the story a bittersweet but fitting close that will stay with me for a long time.
The imagery of St Agnes and the Cornish coastline is stunning. Paige Toon writes it in such a way that I felt as though I was there walking along the beach, breathing in the sea air and watching the sunsets. It made the book not just a romance but also a love letter to place and memory. Overall, this was a moving and memorable read that I am glad I picked up and one I would happily recommend to fans of emotional, sweeping love stories.
I liked Liv and Finn, but I truly loved Liv and Tom. Their relationship felt natural and full of hope, and while I understood the story was always going to circle back to Finn, a part of me desperately wanted it to end with Tom. That tension is what kept me turning the pages, torn between the nostalgia of the past and the promise of a future. The epilogue completely broke me and gave the story a bittersweet but fitting close that will stay with me for a long time.
The imagery of St Agnes and the Cornish coastline is stunning. Paige Toon writes it in such a way that I felt as though I was there walking along the beach, breathing in the sea air and watching the sunsets. It made the book not just a romance but also a love letter to place and memory. Overall, this was a moving and memorable read that I am glad I picked up and one I would happily recommend to fans of emotional, sweeping love stories.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes