Book Review: Summer’s Never Over by Darby Bozeman
Summer camps, ghosts, and tragic events, check out my full review for Darby Bozeman’s Summer’s Never Over below!
Book Information
Five years ago, Greer left her mother behind at the summer camp that her family owns due to tragic events that scarred Greer in more ways than one. Now, Greer has to return due to the death of her mother. Returning brings up a lot of bad memories, but things from the past keeping coming up. And what happened back then doesn’t seem as cut and dry as it did before. Greer has to figure out the truth of how her friend died all those years ago, but something sinister may just stop her before she can.
Review | Heidi Dischler
I’m gonna be honest here: this is not exactly what I expected from this book. There was a mystery, yes, but it felt like there were so many threads that the author was trying to run with that everything just got tangled up into this big ball of randomness. For instnace, we’re trying to figure out what really happened to Greer’s friend, Steph (who apparently burned alive in a forest fire that started at camp). But then we get tidbits about a camp “phantom” (it felt like the author was trying to lean towards horror and supernatural, but it completely fell flat to me). Then you have this weird love triangle going on between Greer and two guys. It was a LOT. I really can’t rate it over a 2/2.5 out of 5 stars (leaning towards 2).
So, with the characters, I think they were all pretty fleshed out. They were honestly probably the shining light in this book. The atmosphere of “summer camp” was pretty great, too, and the author did a great job of describing the setting. The plot, though? It was a mess. I feel like I couldn’t follow one path before another one was being mentioned. And the whole wrap up at the end of the book felt more like it was there for shock value than anything else.
Spoilers ahead.
So, the ending? Steph was really at camp to find out what happened to her mom, Winnie. Winnie actually accidentally got killed when she got in an argument with Steph’s dad and hit her head (classic). They buried her at the summer camp and Steph’s dad, Rig, and Greer’s mom agreed to cover it up. Then, coming out of left field, Wes killed Steph because he thought Steph was going to ruin Greer and make her leave the summer camp…. It was weird as heck and something completely random.
Overall, I really didn’t like this book. I thought that it would be a three-star rating, but after reflecting and then writing this review, I can see that it really wasn’t that good and needs to be two stars. Wishing it was better, but I thought the mystery just didn’t match up and made no sense.
Source: Book of the Month Pick
(P.S. You can read tons of books—including ones written by me—by trying a free trial of Kindle Unlimited!)
