A review by beate251
Seven Summers by Paige Toon

emotional hopeful 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? Yes

3.5

That's just great. The first review on here I read is giving the entire plot away. Haven't you heard of spoilers? It works like that: spoiler inbetween <> then text then spoiler inbetween </>
See? Not difficult!


Anyway, Liv and Finn apparently love each other but Finn lives in LA and refuses to permanently live in Cornwall because of
some tragedy to do with his mother
. He just swans in every summer for a few weeks. Liv refuses to leave Cornwall because of her Down's Syndrome brother who apparently needs her
after their parents' death
, a fact he is entirely unaware of. So after seven summers of back and forth that are neither fish nor fowl but just make everyone miserable, she meets lovely Tom but of course
Tom has an obscure heart condition.  
However, at least he wants to spend his life with her. What is Liv to do?

Normally I love Paige Toon's books but I couldn't get on with this one. There was just too much grief, and jumping back and forth between past summers and the present didn't aid the story. Who were we meant to be rooting for, Finn or Tom or both or none of them?

And that epilogue - 30 pages long and in those pages it basically contained another 14 years. Without that epilogue the book would have worked for me but the epilogue made me angry.

Liv was grief-stricken and whiny through most of the book but Finn clearly didn't deserve a seventh chance after he'd broken her heart so many times.
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