#<- had to make a new tag b/c i'm not sure what genre this wld be called

[e-b-reads]

Some things about Summer Sons

Absolutely not a comprehensive list of things about this book, but I wanted to post some thoughts since this is a book I have seen on tumblr! As per usual, I will attempt not to spoil major plot points, but below the cut, there will be some discussion of character development etc. that may technically classify as spoilers.

(@therefugeofbooks if you were serious about being interested in my thoughts, here they are! there's like 4 paragraphs under the cut tho so definitely don't feel obligated to read.)

This may have been a product of the book, or my reading mood, but: while I was reading this book, I wanted to keep reading and find out what was going to happen, but whenever I put it down, I wasn't particularly yearning to pick it up again. This doesn't mean I didn't want to read it; it just didn't feel urgent. Overall, though, I really liked it, and not for reasons that are obvious in the plot summary!

There are things that probably are graspable from the plot summary that were well done: the general southern gothic vibe (including acknowledgement of the history of plantations and slave labor, without dwelling on these); the spooky magic system (I like how the MC, Andrew, doesn't know all the rules of this, but we can tell there are rules); some ~academia~ (although mostly Andrew is only peripherally interested in this). I also personally like that the characters are grad-school-aged, so this is probably technically a New Adult book (as opposed to Young Adult). I guess I'm not even really a New Adult anymore (even though I don't feel like an Adult at all sometimes), so I generally like books with characters who are over 20!

Really, though, I think Summer Sons can be best described as a book about grief, and also about Andrew coming to terms with his sexuality. This is the part that's really well done, because it's all tied in together; Andrew's grief about his best friend's death is complicated and drawn out (and also made very symbolically clear at times) by the spooky ghost stuff going on, and it's also complicated by Andrew's own lack of self-understanding and his internalized homophobia. The spooky, mysterious plot, driven by other characters, twines well with Andrew's personal journey. And I also like that, while I think it's pretty clear to the reader what's going on with Andrew, we don't get told explicitly "Andrew thought maybe he was gay, but he had internalized homophobia" or "Andrew had moved beyond denial into anger." We see Andrew's actions and his preoccupations, and can draw conclusions from them.

The mystery is solved by the end, but Andrew's personal stuff, while it reaches a partial resolution, is left nicely open in a realistic way. His grief has shifted stages but is still there, and his other personal relationships (romantic and not) have moved into new stages as well, some more fragile than others. This is the kind of ending I like; not one that begs for a sequel, but that makes it clear the characters are going to keep living even though the book is done.