Sunday, August 7, 2011

The Summer We Came to Life, Deborah Cloyed

I don't know what it is about summer that makes one want to read light, fun books, but I am victim! One of those fun summer reads was The Summer We Came To Life By Deborah Cloyed. This is her first novel.

For me, a summer read usually takes place somewhere exotic or outside of my "norm". This usually involves a beach someplace, since I live in land-locked Columbus, Ohio. In this novel, the setting is a beach house in Honduras. Another plot situation I enjoy are stories about women who have been life long friends. Here you have a group of women, Sammantha, Kendra and Isabel who have been friends for years and who are mourning the loss of one of their own, Mina to a battle with breast cancer. During her treatment she penned journals to all three friends. The girls have been vacationing together with Kendra and Isabel's mom's for years.

This first novel finds the friends all at a crossroad in their lives. To mourn and remember Mina, they decide to convene on Sammantha in Honduras for a week long vacation. Here, using Mina's journals, the three friends discover a lot about themselves and their families. As an added twist, and what I thought as the weakest part of the book was Sammantha and Mina's research into the afterlife and how to beat death and find each other after one passes away.

Despite this weak plot line about the science of the afterlife, I found myself wanting to find out what each woman learns about herself and how each deals with the crossroad they are facing.

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