Last Summer: A Novel

by Kerry Lonsdale

An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller.

A novel of love, lies, and deceit from the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Everything series.

Lifestyle journalist Ella Skye remembers every celebrity she interviewed, every politician she charmed between the sheets, and every socialite who eyed her with envy. The chance meeting with her husband, Damien; their rapid free fall into love; and their low-key, intimate wedding are all locked in her memory. But what she can’t remember is the tragic car accident that ripped her unborn child from her. Ella can’t even recall being pregnant.

Hoping to find the memories of a lost pregnancy that’s left her husband devastated and their home empty, Ella begins delving into her past when she’s assigned an exclusive story about Nathan Donovan, a retired celebrity adventurer who seems to know more about her than she does him. To unravel the mystery of her selective memory loss, Ella follows Nathan from the snowcapped Sierra Nevada to the frozen slopes of southeast Alaska. There she discovers the people she trusts most aren’t the only ones keeping secrets from her—she’s hiding them from herself. Ella quickly learns that some truths are best left forgotten.

• ISBN10: 1542093082
• ISBN13: 9781542093088
• Publish Date: 9 July 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Amazon Publishing
• Imprint: Lake Union Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 302
• Language: English

Reviews

[Stephanie]

This review was originally posted on Once Upon a ChapterI received this book for free from Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.





I accepted Last Summer by Kerry Lonsdale for review because I find amnesia stories absolutely fascinating. This one was no different. In fact, it put a new spin on the amnesia storyline. It kept me hooked from beginning to end.

Ella Skye a journalist who is in a terrible accident and she loses a lot in that accident, including her memory. Ella's amnesia is selective though. She can specifically remember parts of the summer before her accident but when she is asked to complete an interview that she had done last summer she has no memory whatsoever of having completed it the first time around. Even stranger is that she has nothing in her personal files on it either.

What follows is a topsy turvy mystery where the reader doesn't really trust any of the characters but there is definitely something below the surface. Just like Ella, the reader also wants to know what the heck is going on. I had my suspicions but ended up being completely wrong because I'm not a psychopath. The story left me feeling a lot like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn did. If you liked Gone Girl, I'd recommend Last Summer by Kerry Lonsdale.

Overall, I enjoyed Last Summer but endings are pretty major for me. It took me completely by surprise which is always a good thing! However, it also left me on shaky ground as far as how I felt with the resolution. That very well might be intended but not something I look for personally in a book. The ending is the only thing that dropped it a star for me. It was a great read and I had a hard time putting it down!

[Jeff Sexton]

Explosive Until Almost Literally The Last Word. This is yet another tale where Kerry Lonsdale superbly plays with memory to tell a truly compelling story, using different memory issues than she did in her Everything series but writing at least as well as that excellent work. If this is your first Lonsdale book, it is a great introduction to her general style and her ability to craft and tell a story that will draw you in and have you literally not wanting to put the book down. Just about the only quibble that can be openly discussed without verging close to, if not directly into, spoiler territory is that the cover, while beautiful in its own right, doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story at all.