It’s the hardest ever to write a review for a book that has blown your mind in every way possible; climbed its way into the deepest parts of your heart and soul. How could I ever do justice to this inspiring story, its amazing, well-fleshed characters, a beautiful narration, magnificent setting and so, so much more?! The Summer of Chasing Mermaids was initially one of my most anticipated books of 2015, but it has easily become one of my favorite books ever!
“When one dream burns to ash, you don't crumble beneath it. You get on your hands and knees, and you sift through those ashes until you find the very last ember, the very last spark. Then you breathe. You breathe. You f****** breathe. And you make a new fire.”
(—taken from the ARC, 96%)
The Summer of Chasing Mermaids tells a story of Elyse, a talented and promising singer, who has lost her voice forever thanks to an accident. At the beginning of the novel we obviously don’t know the full story, but it’s clear that the Elyse we know isn’t the Elyse everyone remembers. As she opens up to the readers, and the people around her, we see her slowly, step by step, get closer to coming to a realization that her life isn’t over because of this accident, it's simply the beginning of something new. The character growth and soul searching Elyse goes through is absolutely gorgeously written: it’s raw, emotional and endearing.
My favorite character by far was Elyse, but needless to say that I adored all the other characters a lot too, especially Christian, Kirby, Sebastian, Noah, Vanessa and Lemon. They’re all so well-written, relatable and it was really hard to part with them as the story came to an end. Dear Sarah and Simon Pulse, would you please give Kirby and her love interest a book with lots and lots of cameos from everyone? That would literally be the dream, thank you!
I don’t want to tell you guys the whole story, plus I feel myself starting to ramble real soon, so I’ll just leave you with a few notes on what you can expect when picking up this beauty:
*there are a lot of poc characters and you'll get to experience the culture of Trinidad and Tobago through various flashbacks
*so many wonderful friendships and great, inspiring sisterhood relationships
*THERE IS A GLORIOUS SHIP (and yes, there are many actual ships, but I'm talking about a metaphorical one) AND LOTS OF KISSING
*sex and female mastrubation topics aren’t shied away from—this is so. very. important!
*sexism and misogyny are touched upon and some of the values of the society are criticized in a beautiful manner
*you'll 99.73% cry a lot and this book will touch you with its gorgeous narrative, a beautiful and haunting story and a great set of characters
This book is hopeful, stunning and so very honest and raw. I loved every single second of it and I wish the story would go on and on forever, because it was truly, truly hard to part from these characters. With this magical novel, Sarah Ockler is now on my watch-list forever and I’m eagerly anticipating her next story! I can’t wait for my gorgeous physical copy of The Summer of Chasing Mermaids to arrive so that I can re-read it again and again, and I hope that you'll end up picking this up so that we can shout our love for this book in all caps, completely incoherent, because that's how this book will make you feel, I can promise you that (◡‿◡✿)
Overall rating: 5.0 out of 5.0
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Reviews with images
Beautiful story!
This book is so beautiful and packs such a power message. I love how diverse this book was, and that it was a sex positive YA book but most importantly I love how realistic and at times, painful this book was to read.These characters aren't perfect and while we do see some character development, this book isn't about making these characters perfect again. It's about how perfectly imperfect we are as humans. How sometimes there are people who aren't nice and do bad things and even though we wish they would change, even though there might a part of them that wants to change, they don't. It's about feeling powerless, feeling like you don't have a voice and like no one can hear you even when you're screaming to be heard. This book is about figuring out who you are when everything you thought you stood for is taken away from you.It's a beautiful book, but it also is sad. It's ending is hopeful but open-ended. I don't really like when books leave things open to the readers interpretation but I can understand why the author did it with this novel. I guess I can only hope that these characters find the happiness they so rightly deserve. I enjoyed this book so much but what made this book so good to me was the characters. I wanted to know them forever. I wanted to just read endless scenes of them hanging out together and learning more about their lives. The romance between Elyse and Christian was so cute but I also wish we couldn't gotten more from it. At times it felt a little rushed and since they only knew each other for the summer and with the way things end at the book, things were left a little open-ended in terms of their relationship too.Overall I'm so happy I read this book and I definitely think it's one everyone should read!
Top reviews from other countries
Angelia Katsianos
Beautiful and Breathtaking
Reviewed in Australia on March 10, 2017
