The Summer We Buried - Jody Gehrman

 

This story follows Tansy, a college guidance counselor who seems to be content with her quiet life now which is a much different life than the free-spirited life she was leading 20 years prior.  However, when Selene - her best friend 20 years ago until Tansy cut her out of her life - comes to visit Tansy and collect on an old debt, Tansy's life will never be the same.  Selene's daughter, Jupiter, goes to school at Tansy's college and Selene wants Tansy to convince Jupiter to break up with her boyfriend who Selene suspects is abusive.  Tansy initially declines but when Selene brings up their shared past, Tansy finds herself drawn back into Selene's intoxicating circle of adrenaline and emotions.  Tansy thinks she can stay on the edges and satisfy Selene's demands while also remaining professional but as more and more secrets get revealed, it is clear Tansy is in deeper than she expects.

TW/CW: suicide, domestic violence, toxic friendships, sexual assault, mental health

I really enjoyed the characters in this book and I loved how small but connected the cast was.  This is really a story about connections - friendships, familial, professional, and romantic - and it was interesting to see how all of those connections can really work their way into someone's life.  The book opens with Selene's visit to Tansy at her work and we immediately get the tension between the two women but we don't find out exactly why until a bit later.  I would have loved more flashbacks to Tansy and Selene's relationship 20 years prior, especially since so much of the current plot directly revolved around them having this really intense friendship.  I thought Tansy's character was really interesting at these different 'phases' in her life. I think a lot of the female protagonists in these domestic suspense/thrillers often fall into a few certain tropes (wine-drunk, obsessive, etc).  And I think if the story would have been set a year or two after the friendship breakup, then we might have seen Tansy fulfill that particular role.  However, choosing to set the story 20 years after the breakup gave both characters enough time to move on and find new things to do with their lives.  I think this meant that the characters we get are much more well-rounded and less prone to drama and makes them more compelling to follow, in my opinion.

I do want to mention briefly that one character suspects Selene has borderline personality disorder (BPD).  They explicitly state Selene has never been officially diagnosed but the character believes she fits the criteria well.  From what I know from listening to people who have borderline/a family member with borderline personality disorder it does seem like Selene fits the clinical criteria. However, I am not a mental health professional and have no personal experience with BPD so I can't entirely speak to the representation.  The surrounding characters who have a pretty extensive history with Selene's emotional swings and outbursts do sometimes come off as dismissive of her and the way Selene's story ends isn't exactly the most uplifting for any readers who might be struggling in a similar way to Selene. 

I really loved the pacing of the book and how snappy it was despite not a whole lot, plot-wise, happening until the ending.  We are following Tansy's POV though the book and in the beginning she's pretty unsure about getting involved.  However, Gehrman does a fantastic job of dropping in new characters or plot information at just the right time that Tansy really has no choice but to keep going.  The forward momentum in the story starts with Selene, but soon Tansy also becomes individually invested and curious in Jupiter's situation outside of Selene's influence. There's also some great push/pull moments with the mystery of the story (is Jupiter's boyfriend abusive or is Selene overreacting) which also kept me wanting to read more.  The story really picks up with the ending which only really works because of how much character and relationship building the story has done up to that point. 

My one gripe about the story is that it wasn't a suspenseful/thrilling as I think it is being marketed as.  The description gives away the event in Tansy and Selene's past that Selene keeps basically blackmailing Tansy about but we get the full story pretty early on in the book and it didn't read as intense as I was expecting.  I was expecting something much more "I know what you did last summer" vibes. I don't think the crime nor the stakes were built up enough to explain Selene coming to collect on a debt twenty years later.  I also didn't buy that Selene was ever a real threat to Tansy.  I could very well see Selene taking matters into her own hands and doing something drastic, but I didn't see how Tansy would get wrapped up in it.  I think if we saw more scenes of them together 20 years ago before things went bad and we were able to see how magnetic Selene was for Tansy then maybe I would be more believing of the current-day situation.  I also didn't feel like the stakes in the story were ever really high enough (until the ending).  Until about the 70% point, this felt much more like a general fiction book about complicated relationships than a suspense/thriller.  I've seen some reviews call this a 'slow burn' suspense which I suppose would fit but I like my slow burns to have a creeping sense of tension and danger which I just wasn't getting.  When I sit back and look at all the plot points, everything I would want from a suspense novel is there but the writing just didn't connect the dots for me.

I think the ending will be hit or miss for readers but I really enjoyed it.  I do feel like it was the strongest and most interesting part of the story because of all the groundwork that was done previously.  I think the ending could have been even stronger if some of my issues with the tension I mentioned previously were done differently.  I do think the ending will require a bit of suspension of disbelief but maybe if you're a reader who connected more with the story and really believed in the tension and conflict between Tansy and Selene it would come across more natural.  It was a bittersweet ending for sure and the type where you're really hoping all the characters will get a happy ending but as the walls start to close in it becomes more and more obvious that can't happen. 

Overall, I enjoyed the read although it felt much more like a general fiction book than a suspense/thriller.  I loved the characters and complicated relationships but found the tension really lacking.

Thanks NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is March 8, 2022