Name: Last Summer
ISBN: 9781643583839

Kerry Lonsdale

Lifestyle journalist Ella Skye remembers every celebrity she interviewed, every politician she charmed between the sheets, and every socialite who eyed her with envy. The chance meeting with her husband, Damien; their rapid free fall into love; and their low-key, intimate wedding are all locked in her memory. But what she can't remember is the tragic car accident that ripped her unborn child from her. Ella can't even recall being pregnant.

Last Summer

Kristen Claiborn

I was introduced to Kerry Lonsdale through my Amazon Kindle unlimited subscription and I will always be glad I spent that money because of her. The story is so twisty I sometimes worry if Lonsdale has healthy personal relationships. There's internal drama, marital drama, EXTRAmarital drama...it's a fun ride.

Megan Leprich

Thank you to much to Amazon Publishing, Lake Union Publishing, and Little Bird Publicity for the free copy of this book for my review. 

This book held so much potential for me and I was honestly excited to read it. I was a little confused by the cover as I did not read the synopsis before diving in and assumed it was a summer read full of fluff and romance judging by the cover (I know you’re not supposed to do that) but boy was I wrong. 

The story follows Ella who wakes up in the hospital after a car accident and discovers that she lost the baby. The only problem is Ella doesn’t remember being pregnant or carrying a child for 21 weeks. Desperate to return to her normal life she takes on a cover story that never went to print the year prior and discovers she doesn’t remember anything about the guy she’s interviewing, Nathan Donovan. She doesn’t understand why she can’t remember her pregnancy or him and starts to try and figure out how the two are connected. 

I was having a great time reading this book until about 75% of the way through, even though I really despised Ella’s husband Damien and how he treated her. Reading about how Ella was trying to recover her memories intrigued me and I felt that I really connected to her character and what she was going through. But then I got to the ending of the book and it all was ruined for me. 

*SPOILER WARNING*

When it was finally revealed at the ending that Damien was sterile and the baby was actually Nathans I was not really surprised but I had a feeling that was the case since she had an affair with Nathan. The thing that really surprised me was that Damien was perfectly fine with it because he loved Ella so much and it killed him not being able to give Ella a baby. 

Then he revealed to Ella that it was planned all along. She had agreed to sleep with Nathan who looked like Damien and they would just pass the baby off as Damien’s. So she purposely took the exclusive story and slept with Nathan only to get pregnant. When she lost the baby, they agreed she would use what she had learned from a neurological doctor that taught her how to repress memories that she didn’t want. Which meant forgetting that she was pregnant, forgetting about the affair with Nathan, and forgetting that Damien was sterile. I assumed, wow, this is the big plot twist and I really didn’t see it coming, I was honestly a little blown away. But I also thought in my head, there’s still quite a few pages left so what could really be happening next? 

Lo and behold, another plot twist, and this is where the book went south for me. Now all of a sudden it’s revealed that Damien lied to Ella. When Ella slept with Nathan to get pregnant she fell in love with him and after hearing about his dead son, she didn’t think she could deceive him like that. So Damien, not wanting to lose the kid, decides to take matters into his own hands and uses Ella’s “code” to help her forget that she had already cheated on him once with Nathan. But what Damien doesn’t know is that Ella has been in touch with the neurological doctor to help her remember all the memories that she lost, including the ones Damien wants her to forget. 

And that is how the book is now getting a sequel that I will probably not be reading.

Jessica 

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Review originally posted here at Booked J. 
  As always, a copy of this book was provided by the publisher or author in exchange for participating in the blog tour/my honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way. 


Kerry Lonsdale just keeps getting better with time, doesn't she? Last Summer is her best work yet. I mean BEST. For a while now, I've been following her work closely and intently. After the way I felt whilst reading All the Breaking Waves, I knew that I needed to get my hands on any and all of the books she gives us. Lonsdale is definitely the type of author who knows how to toy with her audience and leave them dangling on the edge of their seats--she writes in a way that is unforgettable and that is the first word that comes to mind with Last Summer. 

Of all the books of hers I've read since All the Breaking Waves, I've seen just what she can do with her prose and how engrossing each story is. Last Summer is by far her most compelling read yet--and a lot more intense. Fiery, full of tension and mystery, Last Summer is well plotted and impossible to put down. It is the very sort of novel that will give you chills in the warmth of summer. 

Last Summer's best quality is the general gray area that is the unreliable narration. These characters are flawed and wholly complex; you're not certain who you should trust and that is brilliant because it only adds to the novel's bleak, mysterious atmosphere. You spend every moment reading Last Summer with questions at the back of your mind.

What I loved most about Last Summer was the experience in reading it. I never really knew what to expect from it. This made the story all the more intriguing for me. From the moment the story began and the story of Ella, everything unravels for us as readers and it's impossible to describe. Or forget. 

Prepare yourself for the biting air that is Kerry Lonsdale's latest--you're in for an intense ride!