Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the arc!

4.5, rounded up.

tw: mentions of suicide, drug & alcohol use

So, if you know me, you know I don’t do spooky shit. At all. But something about this little blurb made me give Summer Sons a chance, and I am so glad I did. I finished it a day and a half ago and I’ve been thinking about it nearly nonstop since.

Andrew is mourning his best friend, Eddie, who has passed from an apparent suicide. Reeling with the abrupt loss, Andrew packs up and moves almost literally into the life Eddie was living in Nashville, desperate to figure out why his friend would leave him. Between trying to hunt down leads and clues, dealing with ghosts and haunts, and figuring out what the hell Eddie was doing with his life, Andrew is also trying to maintain his own life as a student at Vanderbilt, where Eddie was also enrolled. His new roommate Riley and Riley’s cousin, Sam, bring along a whole other slough of issue for Andrew to sort through and things get dark, really quickly.

Summer Sons is, pardon the bad pun, a haunting story that I literally felt in my gut as I was reading it. I often found myself holding my breath for passages at a time because it got INTENSE. You can literally feel the summer in Nashville and all the dark, wild shit Andrew gets into along your skin as the story progresses.

I loved the way the story blended in all this dark, macabre academia and then just a crew of young people out racing cars and and making questionable choices with drugs and alcohol together. Like, it was just a bunch of regular young adults being young adults while also dealing with ghosts and some magic and terrible, awful things and I bought every second of it.

The characters are COMPLETELY flawed and real and often selfish assholes (hello, Eddie) and yet I still found myself charmed by a majority of them as often and I was annoyed by them. It was long, but I didn’t feel it was too long that my interest waved. Rather, I kept devouring the story, wanting to know what could possibly come next. Also, when I was correct about a hunch I had regarding a plot point I shouted, “I fuckin’ knew it!” out loud at two am. Vindicated.

I really enjoyed this story and I know that it has taken up a bit of a permanent residence in my brain for the foreseeable future.

Also, Sam Halse must be protected at every single cost. If you disagree, don’t talk to me ever.