"This super-charged page-turner sees a woman confront long-buried trauma and truths about her momentous summer on a Greek island as a seventeen-year-old."
Tense and timely, Katie Bishop’s The Girls of Summer debut explores power, consent, coercive control and trauma with unsettling verve.
“It is impossible to exist in the present when the power of the past is so strong”. So Rachel realises some way into her story journey. Now in her thirties and married to Tom, Rachel remains in thrall to the summer she spent on a sun-drenched Greek island when she was seventeen. After revisiting the island with Tom, Rachel finds herself compelled to reconnect with the man she fell in love with all those years ago. Back then, Alistair was pretty much the same age as she is now, a charismatic older man who worked for one of the wealthiest, most powerful men on the island.
As her marriage falters and feelings for Alistair resurface, Rachel slowly acknowledges that her memories of that summer might not represent the truth. As the scales slip from her eyes, she wonders whether she might have been the victim of coercion and abuse. With the narrative cleverly presented through dual “Then” and “Now” timelines, Bishop has a fabulous knack for shifting perspectives, almost mirroring the way Rachel gradually realises the truth.
Unquestionably a gripping mystery, with shocking revelations carefully planted and drawn out, The Girls of Summer is also a thought-provoking exploration of coercion, consent and the way trauma can lead to burying the truth as a form of self-preservation.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
| Other Genres: | |
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A sun-soaked island. An all-consuming romance. The best summer of your life... but what if everything you remember was a lie?
Rachel has loved Alistair since she was seventeen.
Even though she hasn't seen him for sixteen years and she's now married to someone else.
Even though she was a teenager when they met.
Even though he is almost twenty years older than her.
Now in her thirties, Rachel has never been able to forget their golden summer together on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island. But as dark and deeply suppressed memories rise to the surface, Rachel begins to understand that Alistair - and the enigmatic, wealthy man he worked for - controlled much more than she ever realized.
Rachel has never once considered herself a victim - until now.
The Girls of Summer features in the following genres: Crime and Mystery, Debuts, Family Drama, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Psychological thriller, Narrative theme: Social issues, Romantic suspense, Dark romance, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Sexual abuse and harassment, Fiction, Recommendations, General Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Fiction: narrative themes, Romance / Relationship Stories, Violence and abuse in society, Social and ethical issues, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences
The Girls of Summer is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Girls of Summer was written by Katie Bishop and published by Bantam (Transworld) an imprint of Transworld Publishers Ltd
The Girls of Summer has 352 pages
£13.49
