Thinking back on a relationship she had with an older man during a life-changing summer in the Greek isles, Rachel begins the question the story she's been telling herself about him.
When sun-soaked summer days meet deceptively dangerous summer nights, you get Katie Bishop's debut novel, The Girls of Summer. This intoxicating novel follows seventeen-year-old Rachel on a summer trip to Greece and shows how she gets entangled in a web of manipulation and deceit at the hands of an older man. For fans of My Dark Vanessa, this unconventional coming-of-age story will bring all women back to that vulnerable age of the late teens; a time when you think you are strong and invincible, but in fact are prime to fall victim to seduction and exploitation.
The Girls of Summer takes summer lovin' and wraps it up with a nefarious bow. Unsettling, yet timely, this novel will reverberate with anyone who has spent time in a toxic relationship. Told in both past and present by teenage and 30-ish Rachel, The Girls of Summer examines how we rewrite our personal narratives to make them more palatable, shying away from the glaring truth until something forces us to face it head-on.
Spoilers Ahead ... Going into this novel, I knew that there would be some version of a sex scandal, as this book is described as being post-#MeToo. I found The Girls of Summer to be inspired by Jeffrey Epstein's sexual deviances, told through the eyes of a naïve young girl unaware of what exactly she has stepped into ... or, at least, blindly refusing to call it for what it is. An important novel of the times.
- Brooke, Public Relations Librarian