Easy, Breezy

What makes a perfect summer read? A lightweight paper back that can fit in any bag, a story that’s quick paced so that you can get into it in a moment’s notice, a story that’s light enough that it doesn’t weight heavily on your soul. 

In 2021, as my husband went from river to river to find the best fishing spot, I moved from rock to rock finding the best sunny spot to lie back and read my summer read on. I was accompanied by Last Summer by Kerry Lonsdale, the perfect summer read.

Lifestyle journalist Ella Skye, who remembers everything, from every celebrity she ever interviewed to how she met and fell in love with her husband Damien, is confused when she can’t remember her car accident or her lost pregnancy. While trying to uncover the story of her lost pregnancy and car accident, she’s assigned to interview Nathan Donnovan, a celebrity adventurer. Through her interviews with Donnovan, following him around on his adventures, she uncovers her own story, her own lies, and who she can and can’t trust around her.

The twists and turns in this book had me hooked. I was happy to sit on the banks of rivers, lakes, and oceans and read more and more, trying to figure out what was going on behind Ella’s memory loss. Did she have an affair? Did her husband have an affair? What was their fight about? The easy prose and the constant (albeit impossible) twits kept me on my toes. 

At the end of the novel, I was amazed at the convoluted plot. In fact it was so convoluted and bizarre that I was almost angry. How was I ever supposed to figure that out? But I suppose that’s the best type of novel, the one that just gets stranger and stranger as you read through it. The. Appeal of the book was that I chased the plot twists, hoping that I could predict what the next move was going to be, and again and again I failed. 

The pacing was perfect. Each new twist came at exactly the right time, giving me just enough detail as I needed. What made the book perfect was that it kept me just hooked enough to want to continue to read it, but didn’t make me care enough to want to glue my eyes to the book. It was breezy, it was casual, and it was interesting.

The breezy prose and the low stakes plot made this book the perfect read. I truly enjoyed blowing past this novel, just trying to guess how it ended, and what Ella’s future would look like. And I was not disappointed. This is definitely a book I would recommend to anyone who just wants to lie on a beach and disappear into someone else’s improbable world.