The Summer Girl: Missing Woman Cover-Up Mystery/Suspense (4 Stars)

I got the ebook version of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway. As a warning to readers, this book does have quite a bit of swearing. The Summer Girl by Jenny Blackhurst was published in mid-July in both a Kindle and paperback version.

The Premise of the Book

The story takes place on Mary’s Vineyard. Holly has taken a summer job on the island and then suddenly goes missing. Her sister, Claire, flies to the island to try to find Holly. Before long, the current missing person’s case starts to look a lot like another case that took place on the island five years ago.

I must admit that this story really drew me in. It has an interesting plotline, and the mystery kept me guessing who was guilty and who was innocent. I will admit that I was quite surprised by how the book ended. I thought that I had things figured out, and while I was right about some things, I wasn’t right about other things.

The Characters

One thing that I really liked about this book was that most of the characters were not entirely good or entirely bad. There were characters that I really disliked at points that I then came to really like at other points or vice versa. For me, this made the characters feel more real. Most people have some bad and some good in them.

Warnings

As a warning to sensitive readers, this book does unfortunately have quite a bit of swearing in it. This includes the use of the f-word at times. The sexual content was a bit extreme for me likely. For the most part, it was mostly just innuendos, but there were a few scenes that went a bit far. There are violent things talked about and that happened behind the scenes, but the violent content was fairly mild overall.

Overall Thoughts

I do wish that the author had at least cut back on the swearing in this book. Jenny Blackhurst is definitely a talented writer. The plot was very interesting, and it did a great job of making me question how it was going to end and throwing in enough surprises without throwing in so many surprises that the outcome felt too out there. It honestly had the potential to be a 5-star book, but I just couldn’t get past the swearing and other unnecessary material.