Katie Bishop - The Girls of Summer

 

Katie Bishop - The Girls of Summer

4⭐

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Mystery Thriller

Pages: 352

Format: Paperback Proof

Publisher: Bantam 

Published On: 25th May 2023

Huge thank you to Transworld Books for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. 

Book Blurb: 

THE debut of 2023. A compulsive and timely exploration of the complicated nature of memory and trauma, power and consent, victimhood and shame.

'That place has been my whole life. Everything I thought I knew about myself was constructed in those few months I spent within touching distance of the sea. Everything I am is because Alistair loved me.'

Rachel has been in love with Alistair since she was seventeen. Even though she hasn't seen him for sixteen years and she's now married to someone else. Even though she was a teenager when they met. Even though he is twenty years older than her. She's found it impossible to forget their summer together on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island. Until now.

When Rachel unexpectedly reconnects with a girl that she knew back then, she is forced to re-examine her memories of that golden summer and confront the truth about her relationship with Alistair and about her time working for an enigmatic and wealthy man on the island. And when Alistair returns, the pull of the past could prove impossible to resist...

My Review:

So, with this book I have a bit of a love-hate relationship, which eventually turned into love. I started reading this book before its release (thank you publishers for an ARC), however, I couldn’t get into it at all (maybe it wasn’t the right book for my mood at that time, as I am a very much mood reader), so I put it down and decided to come back to it later. I am so glad I did that, as I picked it up a month later, I devoured it…It was so captivating, raw, sad and at the same time uncomfortable and compelling. The writing echoes all of that and the experiences of our main protagonist, her thoughts and trauma are brilliantly communicated.

The story follows Rachel, who with her friend 15 years ago, when she was 17, straight out of school, went on holiday to a Greek island. Her summer holiday soon turned into a love affair with a man named Alistair, who was 20 years her senior. Rachel fell in love with Alistair and even now she can’t forget him. However, as she slowly starts to relive the events of that summer, she realises all the dark secrets of the relationship with Alistair, as well as what happened on the island all those years ago might have been a lie.

This book had a dual timeline, with the first following Rachel when she was just seventeen and the second timeline follows her now, 15 years later. I loved how both timelines had a unique voice, you can tell how Rachel matured over the years, yet see how much she still loves Alistair. Also, I adored how she develops through the book in the current timeline, from someone who was head over heels for Alistair to someone who realises all the trauma and darkness that that summer in Greece entailed. She is quite an unlikable character, but I thought that was the point of her, as you can see her unwillingness to believe and accept that Alistair is anything, but someone who loves her and that the way she portrays him was just her imagining how she wants him to be, rather than who he is. I think her character was suppose to anger the reader but at the same time make reader understand how complicated the nature of grooming and sexual abuse is, especially for the person who experienced it.

This book kept me super intrigued; I just couldn’t put it back once I got into it. Although I probably wouldn’t call this book a thriller or mystery, it was very much women’s fiction/contemporary. It dealt with a lot of important topics, such as sexual abuse, grooming, extortion, the #MeToo movement, etc, so would check the trigger warning before reading as there are parts of this book that were quite dark.

Overall: Very interesting, captivating and well-written story and although I had a love-hate relationship with it at the beginning, I am so glad I read it.  

About an Author:

Katie Bishop is a writer and journalist based in Birmingham, UK. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue, The Independent, and other publications. The Girls of Summer is her first novel.

https://www.katiebishopwrites.com/