Leah
Written on Jun 1, 2011
I’ve been sitting here for about an hour wondering how to review The Summer We Came To Life. But, right now, words seem to be failing me. I don’t think I can adequately convey what this novel made me feel. Without a shadow of a doubt, The Summer We Came To Life is one of the most emotional novels I’ve ever read. I’ve read numerous novels where people die and the people left behind grieve and don’t know how to move on, but The Summer We Came To Life hit me right in the solar plexus for reasons I really can’t comprehend. Honest to goodness, I stayed up until 1am finishing the novel because I just couldn’t let go. I couldn’t put it down and parts of it made me cry like a baby. I know that I enjoyed a novel when I can’t get to sleep at 1 o’clock in the morning because I can’t believe I’ve finished a book and it refuses to let me go. When I started the book, I didn’t know the journey I was going to take. It’s my own fault, I dove into the novel without really knowing what it was about so everything that occurs came as a surprise to me but it surprised me in the best way possible.
I’m not entirely sure what category I’d put The Summer We Came To Life in. It’s a Chick Lit novel of some sort, I suppose and probably veers more toward ‘Women’s Fiction’, as the book is more about friendship than it is about anything else. It’s a novel that a lot of people will be able to understand as Sam, Kendra and Isabel find themselves wondering how to move on after their best friend Mina dies. Not only that, but the girls have their own troubles as Isabel finds herself out of work, Sam is wondering whether to accept her boyfriend’s proposal and Kendra finds herself with an unexpected dilemma. For most of their life, the four girls along with Isabel and Kendra’s mother go on vacations together, but after Mina’s death none of them feel like it, not really, but Jesse and Lynette (Isabel and Kendra’s mother) refuse to let the tradition slip, they all converge in Honduras for a holiday, bringing along Mina’s father Arshan and Kendra’s father Cornell. During the holiday, although there’s a vacant gap where Mina is meant to be, it does indeed help them to be together.
There’s quite a lot of stories we learn whilst reading the novel. Jesse tells us all about Isabel’s father, Arshan tells us about his life, Cornell and Lynettte tell everyone how they overcame segregation in the 60s to be together. Sam is desperate to contact Mina in any way possible, and we see numerous diary entries from the two of them as they try to figure out a way to be able to contact each other from the other side. I think that the moral of the story is that no matter what happens, you can overcome anything. That’s the message I learned whilst reading the book. The characters are as wide and diverse as you could believe, but the love they all feel for each other is immense. I found myself enraptured by the novel as we get to know the characters better. Sam drives the story, but we regularly switch narratives from first-person to third-person and somehow despite the mish-mash way the novel is written, it somehow works. I wasn’t bothered by the change in which the novel was written, switching from Sam’s first-person narrative to third-person and back and forth. It worked, I have no idea how, but I found it captivating.
I must admit to not really believing in the afterlife, all those theories Sam and Mina present about contacting the dead confused me, I’m not ashamed to say. However the love they have for each other, as best friends, as confidantes for so long, negated my confusion and I could understand why they were reluctant to leave each other without at least making a go of contacting each other once Mina was gone. How many people would kill to be able to talk to someone who has passed away, even if it’s just to say goodbye? I know I would love to do that if it was possible. Surprisingly, for a Chick Lit novel, there is a slight paranormal/spiritual touch to the book. I’m not going to give away what happens, because it’s one of the best parts of the book (for me, anyway) but it did surprise me because I enjoyed it. It was such a shock to me, but it was yet another good shock. A lot of people might not be able to grasp it and may not like it (and if you’d told me before I’d read it what was going to happen I’d have said it would have put me off the book) but it was charming. It worked.
The setting of The Summer We Came To Life is perfect, absolutely perfect. I’ve never read a novel set in Honduras and despite the poverty we’re shown in the novel, it sounds like a magical place and I couldn’t think of anywhere else Deborah Cloyed could have set the novel. The setting encapsulated the entire novel. The novel manages to pack in so much. The history of the older characters is rich and interesting, never boring, and I liked the way the older characters taught Sam and Isabel about their struggles and how the world has changed in such a short space of time. There aren’t enough superlatives in the world for me to describe this novel. Just look at the ones I’ve already used: magical, charming, stunning, unputdownable. Just the fact it kept me up so late is all you need to know. I love my sleep but I literally couldn’t wrench myself away, I couldn’t make myself say ‘That’s enough’ and to turn my Kindle off. It was more ‘Oh, there’s only x percent left, I may as well finish it’. I started the novel last night at 45% and even then I was unable to put it down. I read 55% of a novel in about two hours, which is how desperate I was to finish it. I love lots of books, that’s a given. I read more books than most people ever will in their life, and I give lots of 5 star ratings, but there are some novels that should be 5 star stars, if that even makes sense. The Summer We Came To Life touched me deep down, and it’s absolutely worth purchasing. I loved it.