Last year, I tried to complete the seasonal reading challenges on Goodreads (though the skeptic in me feels like it’s a way for Amazon to get people to buy more books). This year, I have been checking the categories and using them as a way to work through books I already own but I won’t buy a book to complete the challenge and it’s also fine if I don’t get all the achievements. I am currently in too many book clubs to also let challenges dictate my reading. It’s always a fine balance between finding things that make you explore new things/get you out of a rut, and turning a hobby into homework.
This is one of those YA novels I remember seeing everywhere when it came out but since most of my YA reading tends to be fantasy or mystery (Karen McManus, especially), I didn’t pick it up until it was on sale. And then let it languish in my TBR pile. I only had two books that I hadn’t already read that would fulfill of the Summer Reading achievement so seemed like the perfect time to finally read this YA novel about rich kids on an island with a secret.
While the novel follows many familiar tropes, it also ends being something a bit different. As far as the familiar: there’s the rich patriarch of the family, and his descendants; his three daughters, who are part of society but also haven’t quite been independent successes; their children, the cousins, who are best friends, after spending every summer together on their private island; and, finally, the outsider, who is basically part of the family except there is an undercurrent of racism and classism in how the older generations ultimately view him.
The story’s narrator is Cadence/Cady, eldest grandchild of the Sinclair family, and this summer will be her first summer back on the island in 2 years, ever since her accident that left her with amnesia and debilitating migraines. She is excited to see her cousins, Johnny and Mirren, and their friend, Patil, again, even if she feels abandoned by them – they just never were good at staying in touch outside of the summer. And, more than anything, she wants to remember what happened that summer, and why she was found on the beach, with a head wound, in her underwear.
First off, there were some things I liked. Every once in a while, Cady inserts these little fairy tale like short stories that try to explain how she understands the world and her family, beginning with a very King Lear kind of framing of three sisters competing for their father’s affection and inheritance.
In other places, Cady gets a bit too symbolic so it’s hard to tell if something is really happening (her bleeding) or if it’s a metaphor. I definitely wanted to know more about what was going on as the novel progressed but Cady is such a moody and disconnected character that I was never fully pulled in or invested. We don’t get nearly enough of Patil and the cousins for them to feel like characters.
And then we get to the end … and I’m sorry, but the secret of that summer just ruined the novel for me, and the character. It definitely took the story beyond the more stereotypical and generic storyline of a summer family drama but it felt more like shock value than something that I felt was worth the reveal.
I’m honestly surprised this was adapted into a show because after spending 8-9 hours with actors playing the characters, it would only make the conclusion all the more frustrating.
