Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: The Summers We Lost
AUTHOR: Helen Blacksmith
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 255 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 18, 2018
BLURB:
Two girls. Two different worlds. 8 summers of friendship. 1 summer of teenage love. Torn apart by whispers and fear. Reunited 30 years later. Is it too late? Or will what was meant to be find away?
REVIEW:
I’m always a sucker for a tale of long-lost lovers. Childhood sweethearts TJ and Gwen have been kept apart far too long, and seeing them reconnect over a long summer with their daughters kept me smiling as I read this out in the warm sunshine on the patio. But despite a solid romantic core and sultry seasonal atmosphere, this book needed some editing work to really flow together as a narrative.
I like how this book follows a fairly conventional romantic arc while still allowing us to fall for the unique characters. Single mothers Gwen and TJ only have a few months to reconnect before real-life issues like school, jobs, and family intervene, so the sweetness and nostalgia of their second chance at love always feels high-stakes. It is so obvious they love and miss each other and have a deep connection—and I love the little bits of 80’s and 90’s pop culture sprinkled throughout.
However, there are a lot of technical errors in this book that contributed to a generally rocky story flow. I can overlook a lot of grammar issues, but many of them were quite obvious and should’ve been fixed long ago. It seriously needed some comma work to break up long sentences and clauses. And there are a lot of dense paragraphs of exposition and backstory that are forgotten the second they are told, making it hard to keep track of what is happening in the story. I couldn’t keep track of names, places, and family members because it was all told through info-dumping rather than actual story. This made it hard to really peel back the layers of the characters and truly get to know them before the end of the book.
This is author Helen Blacksmith’s second novel, and I think her career is only taking off. But she seriously needs some good editors and proofreaders. There is an excellent love story here, but it needs a lot of polishing to truly shine.
RATING: 
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