Cruel Summer by James Dawson Review

Reviewed by Siobhan Bridgwater

The introduction baffled me. The story starts on a cliff edge on the night of a school-leavers ball. A distressed young girl in a flowing red dress falls to her death. Simple enough and yet the story is ladened with so much descriptive text, concentrating on the minutiae rather than absorbing me in the bigger picture, my focus tends to flitter. As the story continues, a year later, when the girl’s circle of friends regroup in a remote, holiday villa  we begin to see the impact of this single event on the group as they silently harbour doubts about whether their childhood friend jumped or was pushed.

And it soon becomes apparent that I do not fall Into the target audience group as this book which is clearly aimed at the “new adult” group: 14 to 35. This is a book suited to teenagers and young adults with its focus on the difficulties of post-adolescent life: fitting in, first love, break ups, dealing with tragedy, sexuality, friendship, trust, betrayal and so on.

It is an easy read but I didn’t particularly favour the style. The running theme of referring to life as a TV series is distracting from the story and irksome and the main characters lacked strong definition. With the late arrival of a seemingly unexpected, and most definitely unwelcome, final guest, the atmosphere at the villa sharply changes as the in-house fighting begins and long held questions are finally voiced. From here on in the story snowballs, following a seriously flawed blackmail attempt, with the appearance of floating guest in the pool. For some inexplicable reasons, the group decide not to call the police but instead to all become accessories by dumping the body at sea and destroying her belongings and hope that no one notices her disappearance. The lack of credibility for these actions seriously weakens the plot and chapter by chapter, the story became more incredulous as the author appears to throw every fleeting thought and flight of fancy into the mix. Events become so increasingly predictable that I did get to the stage where I started to question whether I had actually read this book before.

Past the halfway mark, the story continues unabated along its darker path, lurching from one implausible event to another as the ever-decreasing group struggle to accept a murderer lies within its midst. In the final chapters, when their identity and motives are finally revealed, there is more action and suspense than a late night horror movie and the remaining characters are barely recognisable from their former selves.

An action packed read which includes literally everything you could ever wish for in a book. The only things missing are vampires and logic.

I won’t recommend it.

Rating: 2/5

RRP: £7.99 (paperback) / £4.99 (Kindle)

Available to buy from Amazon here.