Title: Summer's Edge
Author: Dana Mele
Book review written by Alisha W.
------------------------------Spoiler warning!!!---------------------------
Summer's Edge is a story tole through three points of view, Chelsea - the best friend who is literally haunted by the past, Kennedy - Chelsea's ex-girlfriend and the host of the summer lake house, and a third person who I won't spoil yet. In the beginning, five friends finally come together again a year after an accidental fire burned down the lake house and took Emily's life. Ryan, Chase, kennedy, Chelsea, each of them had received an invitation to the precisely rebuilt house, though all of them deny having sent it. Mila - Chase's girlfriend, is tagging along again, just like that fateful summer of Emily's death.
However, as the weekend wore on, Chelsea begins to suspect whether the fire that killed Emily really was an accident, and if the one who started the fire was one of them. having spent a year in a psychiatric ward after, there were many details regarding that night that she doesn't know, and it doesn't help that everybody seems to be hiding something from her. She would've never imagined her friends as killers, but Ryan was convincing. An accidental spark, the whole house up in flames. Nobody willing to save Emily trapped in teh attic and nobody willing to admit to starting the fire. Ryan implores her to leave, but Chelsea finally steels herself, promising to find out the truth no matter the cost.
Each character is interrupted by snippets of text from an unnamed character, presumably Emily. However, it would seem that she holds a grudge against every single one of them. That they were all murders. By the end of Chelsea's section, Ryan had "left," an unknown somebody had fell overboard but no one on the boat had seen. Mila had fallen into an open cellar and died, and a candle was starting to grow into a fire, everything happening exactly like the night Emily died.
The next character, we cut to Kennedy's perspective, two years earlier. it turns out that she can actually see ghosts, and have seen them since she was a child, although she had denied it when Chelsea had her visions. There was the backward girl, the blue lady, the crushed man, They were friendly enough, except for one, the dripping man. he had tried to kill her when she was a child, dragging her into the lake. Ever since then, she had tried to keep the spirits pleased.
By the end of her section, Ryan was pushed off of the boat into the lake by Kennedy after he had continually goaded her, talking crap about all her friends. When Chelsea saw from the dock that Ryan had fell and hadn't resurfaced, she jumped into action despite being terrified of the water. Kennedy followed suit, as did Chase, who was also on boat. Emily, who angry at Kennedy for not being jerk to Mila was in the attic and didn't witness the event. After a fruitless search, none of them had found Ryan. The hours came and went, and Emily knew that they were never going to find him again.
Now we come to the third section. Emily's perspective.
We learn from her that Chelsea had not spent a year in the psych ward. It was only a few weeks. And it was never Emily that died, but her brother, Ryn. After his death, Emily set out for revenge. She invited Chelsea, Chase, and Kennedy, but Mila came too, to her surprise. It was fine with her though. Mila was part of Ryan's death too. Emily ended up pushing Mila down the cellar, locking Kennedy in the attic and trapping Chase in the living room after drugging them. Then, she lit the house on fire, killing all of them before escaping. Emily had cursed all of them to relive their deaths, over and over again, but now that they had learned, the flames no longer burned. With nothing else to do, the friends decided to stay where they were rather than move to and disappear. Instead, they simply hung around the house, playing board games and living their best lives, watching their former selves fall in love make mistakes and live.
Emily sees all of that. And she hates it. Why should they be happy? After all, she knows that when death comes for her, there will be nothing left except eternal existence, knowing that her friend are happy without her.
I enjoyed the book. It was a quick and tense read with multifaceted characters whom all have their own problems. None of them are good people, but there are reasons behind why they are the way they are. 3.7/5 ⭐
- thriller
- horror
- supernatural
