The Summer We Fell by Elizabeth O’Roark is now live!
An angsty and dramatic second-chance-romance full of intrigue and emotion, this is a wild ride.
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Blurb
He was my boyfriend’s best friend—and the bane of my existence. I wanted to hate Luke Taylor. I did hate him. I just never hated him enough.
Now, a decade later, tragedy has brought us back to the place where it all happened—my best times, and my worst.
Our lives have changed, but that pull between us is just as strong as ever.
Only this time, it’s more dangerous too.
Review
3 angst-filled stars
An angsty and dramatic second-chance-romance full of intrigue and emotion, this is a wild ride.
Juliet is returning to the seaside town where she spent her younger years, to help an old friend. She hasn’t been back since she left, leaving behind tragic memories and a lifetime of emotional baggage, and when she arrives she is hit with a massive emotional blow when she comes face to face with the man who shares so much of that past with her.
Switching between past and present, we get to meet a teenage Juliet who was plucked out of poverty and taken in by her boyfriend’s family – the local preacher and his wife. She was welcomed into the home, but treated pretty much like a servant and she feels indebted, and just goes along with whatever they want and plan for her. Despite having a sweet boyfriend, in Danny, she is very much on her own, and is completely smothered by the circumstances of her life and the weight of expectation upon her. And then Luke arrives in town. The best friend of her boyfriend, Luke is wild and free, and for the first time in her life, she has somebody who truly sees her, who stands up for her and defends her, and as Luke becomes a fixture within the family home over summers home from college, she finds herself more and more drawn to him, torn between the girl she is, and the girl that Luke sees she could be.
“You look like something rare and wild,” he whispers, pushing the hair back from my cheek. My breath catches at the feel of his fingers on my skin. “Something they locked up in a cage. And I think you were so relieved to find a safe place to land you didn’t even realize it happened. I thought I could save you if I came here this summer, but even if someone opens the cage, you’ve got to be willing to fly away, too, Jules.”
The book is written entirely from Juliet’s POV, so we feel all of her sadness and restlessness, only able to guess at what Danny and Luke are feeling, which keeps us just as in the dark as she is. And in the present part of the story, it’s even more confusing as she and Luke are reunited and there is clearly so much complicated history between them, and we have no idea what any of it really is! We see stilted interactions, loaded stares and even some steamy encounters… but what does it all mean?
There’s a mystery surrounding their past, which doesn’t get revealed until late in the book, and in the meantime, God, I wanted to smack them – both as teenagers, and in the present. I wanted so much for them to just talk to each other! There’s very little dialogue between them in this book – lots of meaningful glances and gestures, sure, but I wished for more moments of them together, actually getting to know each other, talking about themselves, about what they were feeling and what they wanted, and how they could resolve their situations and be together. And God, I wanted Juliet fight for herself, and for the man she loves.
The final chapters of the book finally bring all the answers, and with it come the feels that I was wanting, but it came a little late in the piece for me. After all of that build-up, distant longing, weirdly detached sexual encounters, and guessing at what went down between these two, we finally see how they came together, and though there’s an element of angst to it, it’s heartfelt and so swoony!
“You’re something wild and magnificent, and he has no idea how to take care of you, so he spends all his time making sure your cage is secure because he has no idea what else to do. And that’s why this kills me, Juliet. Because I think I do know how to take care of you, and I want to take his place so bad that it fucking hurts to look at you sometimes.”
We see this right at the same time the mystery that is hinted at in the story is finally revealed, and the truth of the past comes out in the present, with dramatic consequences. It’s only then that they finally start making declarations, and while I loved seeing them come together and get a happy ending, it all just came crashing in way too late.
“I don’t care how much time it took, as long as you’re mine in the end. I told you I’d wait forever.”
There’s no doubt that there is an epic love story here, I just wish we had seen more of it, and much earlier in the book, so that I had the opportunity to truly become invested in the romance, and really feel it. I would have loved their reconnection had I felt it as one, rather than just being confused and guessing what these two meant to each other.
I am not a fan of unnecessary angst in a book, so this was a tough read for me. I just didn’t feel it enough to fully get invested and appreciate all of those feels.
3 stars.
An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
Elizabeth O’Roark spent many years as a medical writer before publishing her first novel in 2013. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and arts from the University of Texas, and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Notre Dame. She is the recipient of the 2017 IBPA gold medal for romance. She lives in Washington DC with her three children.
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