Melissa Brayden is to me one of the very best writers in the lesbian romance genre. She has set a very high standard, you know like Mount Everest high. Each and every book a met or surpassed the quality and awesomeness of the previous book. That’s unbelievably difficult to achieve, to time and time again bring just the best of the very best. There is a but! With that being said Strawberry Summer is not my favorite of hers. Don’t get me wrong it’s good, totes is, it’s just not great.

Strawberry Summer spends a lot of the story in a flashback. When we meet the two main characters Courtney Carrington has just moved from Chicago to a small picturesque farming community just outside of Santa Barbara. The first day at her new high school, she meets and has her a-ha moment with Margaret Beringer. Margaret is kind of a loner, not unpopular, just keeps to her small group on the fray of popularity. She’s a strawberry farmer’s kid who spends her days hanging out with nature and reading Hemingway for fun. Courtney, a strikingly beautiful department store heiress is immediately smitten and doesn’t hold back her admiration. This is a story of first loves in a star-crossed lover kind of way. Time and distance keep pulling these two apart but they spend most of their late teens and early 20’s as a couple.

There inlays one big issue. You know as the reader a shoe is going to drop, you are waiting for it the whole time. This is a romance novel, they must break up to get back together, and they met as teens for God ’s sake. You know it’s going to happen! Right! So there many stories that have done this exact same format and have done it very well. Poppy Jenkins is probably the biggest standout. To me, this particular book spends too much, like 75+% of the book in flashback mode. You just keep waiting for the younger days to be over and get to the now. Well, at least I did.

The other issues. It’s not fun! I know I can’t believe I wrote that, but it wasn’t. There just isn’t that great dialogue between the mains that you expect from a Brayden book. Up until know, you had amazing witty banter and wordplay. You just don’t see it in this one, maybe because Margaret is a more serious character and humor isn’t her go to language. I was missing it, I wanted it back! I also wanted that amazing tension Brayden is the queen of ratcheting up. Again, not there! I didn’t feel that the transitions were as seamless as previous books either, I kept thinking, another summer and they are still together, where are we headed, why is this not moving along at a faster pace. So much of the book was in the past, I just kept wishing more of it would have been focused on the present.

There are good moments too. Moments that are so sweet you smile and moments so tragic your heart breaks. Overall it is a good book, it really is. There are going to be people that adore this one, promise. To me, this one was somewhat, formula wise, reminiscent of Waiting in the Wings, but without the tension and amazing interchange between characters. Even the supporting cast was cute but lackluster. This feels harsh, and I don’t mean it to be. It is a good book, I totally promise.

Strawberry Summer follows Margaret 'Maggie' Beringer, a small-town girl whose family own the local strawberry farm, and mysterious and devastatingly gorgeous department store heiress Courtney Carrington. After five years of no contact following their break up, they meet each other again when Courtney returns to town following her father's death. Following the timeline of their relationship, from the moment they met as teenagers, to the moment they meet again and beyond, the reader falls in love with them falling in love, and gets to experience the highs and lows they have together.

Holy moly, this book emotionally destroyed me in the best possible way. There was the perfect blend of passion, love, and angst, and I was completely enraptured from beginning to end. It's hauntingly beautiful, and the connection between them stays with you long after you've read it.

I really appreciated the flashbacks that we got (most of the book was recounting the previous seven+ years of their relationship) because it totally added to the emotional strength of their story and how much their reunion meant. I think without those flashbacks, and therefore this book solely being about their reconnection as both friends and a couple, it wouldn't have been nearly as good as it actually is.

I felt everything that they felt. I truly believed that Courtney and Maggie were the loves of each other's lives, and the fact that they got a happy ending made my heart swell.
This is one of those books I wish I could read for the first time over and over again because the genuineness of it absolutely struck me. Everyone in this book was real to me. No one seemed to be two-dimensional, and even the secondary characters had a warmth and depth to them that only a good writer could give them.
I welled up reading this, that's how much it affected me.

If I could give this more than five stars then I absolutely would. This is the F/F romance I've been waiting to read. It's crushingly gorgeous. It's heartwarming. It's absolutely everything you could ever hope for.

There are authors you wish them to have 100 books already published, so you can read them and only them in the following year or so. Melissa Brayden is that author for me. No matter of the plot, of the book, of the characters, whenever I read one of her books, there is that warm, fuzzy feeling it causes inside of me. Something just melts inside, and you can't do anything but live through and feel with and for those characters. Strawberry summer is no exception. Both Margaret and Courtney are so well written, so wise for their age, so convincing as character, both in their teen years as well as in their twenties. Melissa Brayden, when she writes happy, love scenes, is able to create warmth and loveliness, and, if she writes about unfortunate moments, you feel the deepest sadness and grief for the characters.