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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
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.... I still feel a little on the fence about this book. Which I decided, is maybe the whole 'problem' ......
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Click here to read my review.
.... I still feel a little on the fence about this book. Which I decided, is maybe the whole 'problem' ......
Follow along on my Bookstagram/Instagram.
There was a summer where Tansy was drawn in by the brightness and energy and sharp-edged determination of one of her fellow summer workers at a spa, Selene. A woman with a million stories of the life she used to live, fantastic and fascinating and intoxicating. But even the greatest of summers end and this one ended with a murder that Selene convinced her they needed to cover up, and the guilt drove her as far away as she could get. Twenty years later, Selene has returned to demand Tansy help her look into her daughter relationship, insisting that Jupiter’s boyfriend is abusive and that Tansy owes her and digging into her life both to make sure she does as asked and, possibly, in a desperate bid to mend a friendship lost. Can Tansy work around her former friend’s demands and keep her professional integrity? Does she want to?
Jody Gehrman’s The Summer We Buried just doesn’t work for me on any level. It was marketed as a thriller but then mostly dealt with the protagonist’s personal trauma and drama as her literally crazy former best friend comes back into her life nearly twenty years later to demand she help break up Selene’s daughter’s relationship or else. And also Selene’s younger brother is hot and that will take up so much page space.
The antagonist really seems to be Selene and her personality disorder more than the daughter’s abusive boyfriend or the situation Tansy has found herself in in her life. Selene marches in and makes demands, holding the events of a summer long ago over protagonist’s head as a threat, trying to make Tansy do her bidding despite her professional duties to her patients. She goes to Tansy’s house with no warning or indication that she should know where Tansy lives to push her to do the thing. She’s clearly a character who needs serious help, but then Tansy just goes along with it, telling herself that if she does a little of what Selene wants then she can dig her feet in later and not go all the way. She even convinces Selene’s younger brother the professor/government agent/ person who lived with this shit for years of this path. It’s frustrating and sad rather than thrilling.
And the romance with the younger brother isn’t any better. It feels too fast, too included because the author needed to fill page space, too much like the ending had been set already and it needed to be there for that ending to work. It does not even feel like it has a solid foundation, Tansy never really explains what Selene has on her because ‘a man just couldn’t understand’ and goes on to keep hiding more and more from him as the plot continues. It’s the kind of thing that leaves me feeling like the ending should have been the half way point of the story, with the next half dedicated to the whole house of cards falling in around everyone’s heads.
That ending is a fair chunk of my frustration too. With Selene’s mental health issues being such a major part of what ties everything together and drags the various characters into place, the ending is simultaneously the only way the book could have ended and also feels totally unearned. The pathos for Selene could have been there, should have been there, but a late story character revelation tears a good chunk of it away. I know nothing about borderline personality disorder or how it effects people who have it, Selene could easily be an accurate bad case scenario for it and I would not know, but it feels like a depiction of refusing to deal with their mental illness and forcing someone else to fix the problem they caused. Selene is gone and Tansy is left holding everything together for her and cleaning up the mess. And I hate it.
Which really is the problem here, The Summer We Buried could be the most sensitive portrayal of someone dealing with a friend having bpd in recent writing, but it just does not work for me personally. It feels overly dramatized, very made for TV movie, in its plot and character work. I would probably be kinder to it without the suddenly aggressively hetero romance and the weird gender essentialist reason for bad communication, but I cannot know how much kinder I would be.
Which is a real shame because there are several moments where the author will find space for a lush description of a landscape or will pull Tansy away from the Selene drama and let her interact with a different set of characters, allowing for moments of warmth and camaraderie that feel so much more real and solid than any of the rest of the book. It is clear that Gherman has skill as an author, but I do not know that she is an author for me. I give The Summer We Buried a two out of five. I think I would try Gherman’s writing again, but in a different genre.
This book was provided to me through netGalley for honest review. Review was previously posted at https://tympestbooks.wordpress.com/2022/08/24/the-summer-we-buried/
Jody Gehrman’s The Summer We Buried just doesn’t work for me on any level. It was marketed as a thriller but then mostly dealt with the protagonist’s personal trauma and drama as her literally crazy former best friend comes back into her life nearly twenty years later to demand she help break up Selene’s daughter’s relationship or else. And also Selene’s younger brother is hot and that will take up so much page space.
The antagonist really seems to be Selene and her personality disorder more than the daughter’s abusive boyfriend or the situation Tansy has found herself in in her life. Selene marches in and makes demands, holding the events of a summer long ago over protagonist’s head as a threat, trying to make Tansy do her bidding despite her professional duties to her patients. She goes to Tansy’s house with no warning or indication that she should know where Tansy lives to push her to do the thing. She’s clearly a character who needs serious help, but then Tansy just goes along with it, telling herself that if she does a little of what Selene wants then she can dig her feet in later and not go all the way. She even convinces Selene’s younger brother the professor/government agent/ person who lived with this shit for years of this path. It’s frustrating and sad rather than thrilling.
And the romance with the younger brother isn’t any better. It feels too fast, too included because the author needed to fill page space, too much like the ending had been set already and it needed to be there for that ending to work. It does not even feel like it has a solid foundation, Tansy never really explains what Selene has on her because ‘a man just couldn’t understand’ and goes on to keep hiding more and more from him as the plot continues. It’s the kind of thing that leaves me feeling like the ending should have been the half way point of the story, with the next half dedicated to the whole house of cards falling in around everyone’s heads.
That ending is a fair chunk of my frustration too. With Selene’s mental health issues being such a major part of what ties everything together and drags the various characters into place, the ending is simultaneously the only way the book could have ended and also feels totally unearned. The pathos for Selene could have been there, should have been there, but a late story character revelation tears a good chunk of it away. I know nothing about borderline personality disorder or how it effects people who have it, Selene could easily be an accurate bad case scenario for it and I would not know, but it feels like a depiction of refusing to deal with their mental illness and forcing someone else to fix the problem they caused. Selene is gone and Tansy is left holding everything together for her and cleaning up the mess. And I hate it.
Which really is the problem here, The Summer We Buried could be the most sensitive portrayal of someone dealing with a friend having bpd in recent writing, but it just does not work for me personally. It feels overly dramatized, very made for TV movie, in its plot and character work. I would probably be kinder to it without the suddenly aggressively hetero romance and the weird gender essentialist reason for bad communication, but I cannot know how much kinder I would be.
Which is a real shame because there are several moments where the author will find space for a lush description of a landscape or will pull Tansy away from the Selene drama and let her interact with a different set of characters, allowing for moments of warmth and camaraderie that feel so much more real and solid than any of the rest of the book. It is clear that Gherman has skill as an author, but I do not know that she is an author for me. I give The Summer We Buried a two out of five. I think I would try Gherman’s writing again, but in a different genre.
This book was provided to me through netGalley for honest review. Review was previously posted at https://tympestbooks.wordpress.com/2022/08/24/the-summer-we-buried/
To start off the review I have to say I enjoyed this book. It was well written, and it didn't avoid talking about some heavy subjects, even tho i think those heavy topics could've been pushed further at times.
This book is a slow paced thriller/mystery book, and that type of book doesn't do a lot of me.
There wasn't much thinking or guessing what happens next.
Most of the reveals I personally found predictable, so they didn't come as a shock when they happened.
Some of the characters fell flat for me, and i think Selene and Tansey were the most fleshed out characters of the book, while characters like Zach and Jupiter were one dimensional in my opinion.
Other than the thriller/mystery aspect of the book there is also the romance part that i didn't love. It used the insta love trope to set up the romance and i find that to take away from what could've been a good romance. Romance wise I'm glad it took only a small portion of the book, and the rest didn't involve it.
The ending was okay, but it wasn't anything to unexpected.
Also topics of mental illness are mentioned in the book, especially BPD but in my opinion it was very surface level and based on the basic symptoms of that disorder, and i felt that if the author was already mentioning it they could've at least put a bit more substance in that conversation.
Overall, even with the issues i have with this book, reading it i have to say i had fun and i wanted to see what will happen by the end.
Trigger Warnings included in this book are topics of mental illness, sexual assault, abusive relationships.
- Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
This book is a slow paced thriller/mystery book, and that type of book doesn't do a lot of me.
There wasn't much thinking or guessing what happens next.
Most of the reveals I personally found predictable, so they didn't come as a shock when they happened.
Some of the characters fell flat for me, and i think Selene and Tansey were the most fleshed out characters of the book, while characters like Zach and Jupiter were one dimensional in my opinion.
Other than the thriller/mystery aspect of the book there is also the romance part that i didn't love. It used the insta love trope to set up the romance and i find that to take away from what could've been a good romance. Romance wise I'm glad it took only a small portion of the book, and the rest didn't involve it.
The ending was okay, but it wasn't anything to unexpected.
Also topics of mental illness are mentioned in the book, especially BPD but in my opinion it was very surface level and based on the basic symptoms of that disorder, and i felt that if the author was already mentioning it they could've at least put a bit more substance in that conversation.
Overall, even with the issues i have with this book, reading it i have to say i had fun and i wanted to see what will happen by the end.
Trigger Warnings included in this book are topics of mental illness, sexual assault, abusive relationships.
- Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
Oh fun, another dehumanizing view of borderline personality disorder. The second that diagnosis comes up were hit with a laundry list of what makes people with BPD feared and demonized. Selene’s character could easily have been built without a diagnosis. Real people have BPD and real people are negatively impacted by descriptions like this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism
Dehumanizing depictions of Borderline Personality Disorder.
After the first couple of chapters, I felt more invested in the story. I think I liked The Girls Weekend better, but okay overall.
"Maybe everyone is complicated, and jumping into their mess is the price you pay if you don’t want to be alone."
The story started 20 years ago, with Tansy and Selene 18 and 29.. Their friendship blooming through shared secrets in the Summers and ends quite abruptly with a tangle of guilt of covering up a shared crime..
After 20 years, the dark end of the best summer of her life still haunts Tansy and when Selene shows up quite literally in her office asking for repayment, Tansy knows its not gonna end well.. Because try as she might, she will never get over the intoxicating and Moody presence of Selene Rathbone.
When I started reading the book, I did not think i will actually like it. The Blurb was intriguing enough, quirky hypnotic characters, long shared secrets and friendships.. But it didn't have a lot of mystery, it was obvious and probably overused.. But by almost 30% of the book, it didn't matter because basically it's not a thriller but it's a psychological minefield. The characters, their dynamics and everything happening around was not only hypnotic but also actionpacked and very engaging. All the characters were well written and interesting and i was invested in knowing more about their story. Even the slow burn which i usually hate, made for a perfect weekend gateway for me..
Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the E-ARC
The story started 20 years ago, with Tansy and Selene 18 and 29.. Their friendship blooming through shared secrets in the Summers and ends quite abruptly with a tangle of guilt of covering up a shared crime..
After 20 years, the dark end of the best summer of her life still haunts Tansy and when Selene shows up quite literally in her office asking for repayment, Tansy knows its not gonna end well.. Because try as she might, she will never get over the intoxicating and Moody presence of Selene Rathbone.
When I started reading the book, I did not think i will actually like it. The Blurb was intriguing enough, quirky hypnotic characters, long shared secrets and friendships.. But it didn't have a lot of mystery, it was obvious and probably overused.. But by almost 30% of the book, it didn't matter because basically it's not a thriller but it's a psychological minefield. The characters, their dynamics and everything happening around was not only hypnotic but also actionpacked and very engaging. All the characters were well written and interesting and i was invested in knowing more about their story. Even the slow burn which i usually hate, made for a perfect weekend gateway for me..
Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the E-ARC
I thought it was interesting to have a character with borderline personality disorder, but I was not riveted. The pacing was slow and there were many repetitive explanatory passages. Maybe more enjoyable as a book—as opposed to audio…easier to skim past unnecessary explanations.
I thought this was a good thriller, for the most part. It was a quick read for me, and it made since for it to be due to the ending. This book does talk about domestic violence, but nothing to gritty and it's talked enough to make it known of the issue this causes between the characters. Working up to the climax, and even a little past it was great but the ending was not one I liked. Personally, I would've liked to read more about the legal battle Selene and Jupiter (and other) would have went through, since I can't imagine a man like Colton's father not doing as much as he possibly can to find out who did it, or let Jupiter go that easy either. Nor do I think the car washing incident would've been dealt with so easily... I did not like that it just "resolved" itself in the background, but I did like the little twist between Jupiter and Selene.
Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC!
This was slow paced psychological novel about Tansy who is an academic counselor. Tansy was best friends with Selena almost 2 decades ago when a tragic and shocking incident made it difficult for their friendship to go on. Now, after years of no communication, Selena is suddenly back in Tansy's life, demanding a favor.
This book failed to keep me interested. The story is told only from one POV. I think having multiple POVs would have helped. I would have been particularly interested in Jupiter or Selena's POV. Another thing that I felt was missing in the book was some good character development, the lack of which made it difficult for me to relate with the characters. Also, the intrigue factor was not that great. The book really use a little more development of plot lines to make it more impactful and intriguing. With a little more editing, this can be a much better book.
This book would be a good read for someone who likes slow-paced psychological mysteries.
#NetGalley #TheSummerWeBuried
This was slow paced psychological novel about Tansy who is an academic counselor. Tansy was best friends with Selena almost 2 decades ago when a tragic and shocking incident made it difficult for their friendship to go on. Now, after years of no communication, Selena is suddenly back in Tansy's life, demanding a favor.
This book failed to keep me interested. The story is told only from one POV. I think having multiple POVs would have helped. I would have been particularly interested in Jupiter or Selena's POV. Another thing that I felt was missing in the book was some good character development, the lack of which made it difficult for me to relate with the characters. Also, the intrigue factor was not that great. The book really use a little more development of plot lines to make it more impactful and intriguing. With a little more editing, this can be a much better book.
This book would be a good read for someone who likes slow-paced psychological mysteries.
#NetGalley #TheSummerWeBuried
Slow burn, but kept my attention. This book was an enjoyable read, but I felt it was more mystery thank thriller.
This story is full of dark secrets with several twists. There are flashbacks to the past that have resulted in secrets and undeserved loyalty. There are present situations with domestic violence, sexual assault and mental health issues. There is also a romance thrown in the mix. The ending seemed a bit unrealistic. While I wasn’t overwhelmed with this book, it was on okay read that kept my interest.
This story is full of dark secrets with several twists. There are flashbacks to the past that have resulted in secrets and undeserved loyalty. There are present situations with domestic violence, sexual assault and mental health issues. There is also a romance thrown in the mix. The ending seemed a bit unrealistic. While I wasn’t overwhelmed with this book, it was on okay read that kept my interest.