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rachels_booknook 's review for:
The Girls of Summer
by Katie Bishop
Advanced Book Review! Thank you @netgalley & @stmartinspress for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
“Joining a post #MeToo discourse, The Girls of Summer grapples with themes of power, sex and consent, as it explores the complicated nature of memory and trauma – and what it takes to reframe, and reclaim, your own story.”
Written in dual timelines of “then” and “now”, The Girls of Summer is narrated, and it felt very narrative by Rachel (great name), who spent a summer on a remote Greek island at age 17 and is now living in London at 34, with her husband, but that summer is still haunting.
At first, it reminded me of Mamma Mia – a group of friends travel to a Greek island and one of them decides to stay. However, it quickly became clear that it’s not the same at all, that it’s a much darker story about the girls on the island who were taken advantage of.
Unfortunately, Rachel couldn’t get past what she saw as a real romance with an older man, or see her time on the island for what it actually was. I found this a bit frustrating and repetitive. Knowing who she was at the start of the novel, it was surprising that Rachel ended up in this situation, but I guess that’s kind of the point of the book – that it could happen to anyone.
Rachel’s whole life was consumed by this summer, and although this does become more understandable the more you read, it takes a while for the full story to start coming out and it took me a while to get into it. I also read reviews about a twist coming closer to the end, but to be honest, it wasn’t as big or surprising as I had hoped.
I this this is an important topic and I think Katie Bishop does a good job in her debut novel of digging into this world and how this experience can affect someone many years later.
I don’t want to give anything away but if you’re going to read this one and are worried about certain topics, be sure to look up the trigger warnings first.