The Summer We Forgot by Caroline George Review

 Happy Friday Bookish Friends :)

I pray today finds you all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me for another book review here on The Preppy Book Princess.

Are you guys doing anything fun for the weekend? I'm actually working today, Saturday and Sunday this week, so I probably won't be doing anything too exciting, but I do look forward to reading and maybe playing some board games with my husband.

Last month I shared with you all my list of my 2022 most anticipated releases. 

Today I'm here to share with you all a review of one of the titles from that list, and honestly, probably ones of the ones that I was most excited about from the entire list.

Keep reading for my full review.

The Summer We Forgot by Caroline George:

Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Publication Date: March 8th, 2022

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Young Adult Mystery

Synopsis:

Caroline George once again transports readers with lush, evocative prose, leading them to ask the question: what happens when we can’t even trust ourselves?

Some memories are better left forgotten.

Darby and Morgan haven’t spoken for two years, and their friend group has splintered. But when the body of their former science teacher is found in the marsh where they attended camp that summer, they realize they have more questions than answers . . . and even fewer memories.

No one remembers—or no one is talking.

The group of reunited friends begins to suspect that a murderer is stalking the coastal highway 30A, and they must try to recover their memories as quickly as possible . . . before the history they can’t remember repeats itself.

Everyone has a secret.

As tensions rise and time runs out, Darby and Morgan begin to wonder if they can believe one another . . . or if they can even trust themselves.

My Review:

I have to be honest that I was expecting something entirely different from this one. Dearest Josephine was one of my very favorite reads of 2021, and when I heard that not only did Caroline George have a new novel coming out, but that it was going to be a young adult murder mystery, I couldn't wait to dive into it. However, right from the opening chapters I had a feeling this wasn't going to be a book I was going to end up enjoying, and even though I kept hoping that wouldn't be the case, this one ended up being a total disappointment, and is definitely my least favorite read of the year so far.

The Summer We Forgot is about a group of seven teenagers who two summers ago took a two week training course at a summer camp together in order to become counselors later that year, and not one of them can remember what happened at camp or much of the rest of that summer. Most of them kind of lost touch with each other around the same time, and their friendship group has kind of diminished. When the camp director's body is discovered at the summer camp in the present day, the seven teens begin suspecting they're forgetting something critical about what happened that summer. As they try and put the pieces together, they're not sure who to trust or what's the truth and what is simply lies.

I ended up having to force myself to finish this one. It was way too long for what  was necessary in my opinion, and I had such a hard time keeping the characters straight. The story is told from the POV's of Darby and her one time best friend turned love interest Morgan, and I honestly couldn't keep track of which POV was which. Their voices sound identical, even though they're not supposed to have that much in common. A lot of the story is the same events being focused on over and over again, and I felt it could have cut a lot of the word count if some of that had been excluded. This story also deals with a lot of dark content, and I wouldn't particularly recommend it for younger teens. While it definitely deals with trauma and grief and mental illness, it also heavily focuses around teens drinking and partying, and quite a bit of make out  sessions which I really didn't want to be reading about.

Even though I wasn't particularly enjoying it, I kept pushing myself to finish it as there was so much hype surrounding the murder. However, I found all that build up to be a huge disappointment in the end, and I didn't really find much of it to be too big of a surprise.

Final Rating: 2/5.

I may be in the minority on this one, but I really didn't enjoy it, it wasn't at all what I was expecting, it was a lot edgier than I felt was necessary, and it's not one I'll be personally recommending.

Thanks so much to Thomas Nelson for allowing me to advance read and review this!

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary advance reader copy of this novel from the publisher (Thomas Nelson) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day. :)