I’m not sure how I feel about this one still. I liked it while I was reading it but I found it very forgettable. I did really like the characters and the story line.

A great slow binging thriller. This book is packed with emotions but also kept me on the edge of my seat.

Tansy is a college guidance counselor that gets a visit from a frenemy of the past with a request...
Her ex friend Selene has demanded Tansy talk to her daughter, Jupiter, into leaving an abusive relationship but when Tansy refuses, Selene threatens her with a secret from their past...


This book was dark, mysterious, with great character development.

The cover really drew me in wanting to read this book, but the execution was fine. It was a good book, but not some I'll look back to remembering so much.

Not every thriller is thrilling. The Summer We Buried is not Jody Gehrman’s first rodeo, but it does not exactly speak to a deft handle on her material. If you want nearly everything laid out for you in advance, The Summer We Buried may be rewarding – otherwise you can tell you don’t need to dig it up at a mere glance.

Tansy is a guidance counsellor at a college. Selene, a friend that she hasn’t seen in seventeen years, tells Tansy that she must try to convince a student – Selene’s own daughter Jupiter – to break up with her seemingly abusive boyfriend, or the truth of seventeen years ago will be revealed.

That summary is the proper vagueness that you want from a blurb. If you read The Summer We Buried, you will find out what happened on that fateful summer eve almost instantly. Where other contemporary authors might drip feed the events of the past, interspersed through a novel either in alternating chapters, or gradual revelations through dialogue, Gehrman plays her hand at the very first opportunity. The power of blackmail is that you can’t reveal the terms to anyone lest you get exposed; Tansy shares her secret so widely that it’s amazing that Selene has any power over her at all.

Later revelations stretch the bounds of credulity, making one wonder how Selene and Jupiter had managed to function in society in the years prior to Tansy’s reappearance in their lives.

With a cavalier endgame that suggests that the criminality of every crime is relative, The Summer We Buried collapses into its own ridiculousness. A thoroughly unsympathetic cast of characters and a near terminally foolish narrator make The Summer We Buried an eminently forgettable novel – degrees of sameness do not matter if it’s a good version of the same, but The Summer We Buried synthesises none of the good and leaves only the ashen remains of a thriller’s bones.

An ARC of The Summer We Buried was provided by Crooked Lane Books in exchange for review.

‘What he doesn’t know—what nobody knows, except Selene and me—is the leverage she has over me. The secrets neither one of us can afford to say out loud.’

An interesting ride of secrets and lies in THE SUMMER WE BURIED by Jody Gehrman. Overall I enjoyed the story, though there are sections of the book I admit I skimmed through that I found a bit repetitive.

Love The Ending!

Thank you, NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books, for providing me with an eBook of THE SUMMER WE BURIED at the request of an honest review.

I think if I had known this book was more romantic suspense than thriller/mystery, I probably wouldn't have picked it up to read. This was definitely not a thriller as it was a very slow burn. The character development was okay, but I just could never really get engaged in their story.

This was a gripping read that dealt with multiple elements of friendships, past trauma, and memories, all narrated superbly with a dual-timeline narration. Tansy and Selene have not seen each other in a long time, but when Selene's job brings them both face to face, they need to stop running away from their pasts, and do their best to grapple with the consequences of their actions. The pacing was fast and gripping, and I loved the characterization of both Tansy and Selene. I had a good time reading this book. My thanks to Gehrman, and the publishers Crooked Lane Books for gifting me with a copy of this book.

I received a copy of this to review. The plot sounded amazing I just could not get into the book and characters I wanted to like the book it had a lot of plot twists and I set it aside a lot

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC - It's a good thing I've downloaded all my books ahead of time before they were all archived. I know it's late but here is my review. This was a slow burn for me however as much as I want to give it 5 stars I can only give around 3.5. It's not the kind of story that gets stuck in my brain but it still perked my interest as I was able to finish the entire book and didn't DNF it. I will still recommend this to those thriller lovers who likes twists and turns. TW Sexual assault and Domestic violence.

A story with twists and turns and secrets of the past that are fairly predictable. The main character has a lot of trauma and in turn her bond to her old friend and coconspirator makes her question her own personal validity. TW: physical abuse, sexual assault, pregnancy loss, manipulation, mental/emotional abuse

Make a whole pot of tea because you aren’t going to want to put this one down! My favorite of Gehrman’s books, this gripping story of female relationships and the way our past can catch up to us is a scintillating tale of how sometimes there is no good choice.

Gehrman’s scenes transport me into the Northern California summers of her youth, imbuing them with the magic of memory and tragedy in a complex thriller about friendship, motherhood, hard choices, and a refreshing dose of romance.

Find a comfy chair and a good drink so you can get lost in the world of The Summer We Buried.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This was a wild read for sure! would recommend and reread but would really love to see this as a tv series!

This was a fast read with dual timelines one focusing in past and one in the present and the crime that changed everything for Tansy and Selene. The two friends have not seen each other in a long time, but when Selene decides to visit her former best friend at her job, the memories resurface and cause Tansy to have to deal with the consequences of the choices she made that memorable summer.

This was a fast read with a not very memorable story, but it was interesting enough that I finished the book in a couple of sessions. I like the characters and while Selene comes off as extremely off-putting at first, she evolves as the story is told. The story line was somewhat predictable, but it had enough twists to keep it interesting.

The Summer We Buried is a phenomenal thriller from start to finish. Filled to the brim with twists and a captivating plot, this one is sure to keep readers hooked. The characters are well-developed. The story is incredibly fast-paced. This is one not to be missed! Highly recommended! Be sure to check out The Summer We Buried today.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane for an eARC of The Summer We Buried, by Jody Gehrman.

This was a really fun suspenseful, slow-burn, psychological mystery/thriller. I was really drawn in from the start and I think Gehrman really pulled it off. Though I wouldn't call this fast-paced, I think the slow burn wasn't too dragged out at all, it only added to the suspense.

A 3.5 stars for me. Upon finishing it I gave it 4 stars, I read it so quickly and enjoyed the ending but I wouldn't say it is a super stand-out and memorable mystery thriller. I would absolutely recommend this to those that do enjoy a well fleshed-out slow burn story, less so to readers that prefer a super fast, action-packed and high stakes thriller.

i was really excited to read this book, but it archieved and now i cant download it im now planning on buying the book.

https://lainahastoomuchsparetime.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/adult-thriller-review-the-summer-we-buried/

Unfortunately I found this book really underwhelming. It’s not a particularly thrilling thriller. I think this is supposed to be really psychologically twisty and dark, but I kind of just found the relationship between Tansy and Selene annoying. You hear a lot about how manipulative Selene is and how obsessed, basically, she and Tansy were with each other, but that’s not shown much.

Also I thought the romance was kind of out of place. It felt like the book suddenly took a couple chapters out of a romantic suspense – it didn’t fit at all. Especially the random explicit sex scene, which was not expected at all. It really didn’t serve the plot, and it was just kind of weird.

I’m gonna talk about the ending now, skip if you want. It really bothered me that none of the characters face like any consequences. Especially Tansy, who gets everything she wants and the only thing she has to deal with is some mild guilt which doesn’t actually seem to bother her much. She also doesn’t really DO anything by her own motivation in the book, it’s all her doing stuff someone else tells her to do.

I was just very meh on this. It was just really bland and not that interesting.

Representation: Tansy’s brother is gay.

Content notes: Lots of talk about rape and domestic abuse, including a fairly graphic attempted rape scene. Also, miscarriage is talked about a lot at the beginning of the book, and there’s an explicit sex scene. CW for suicide as well.

There are slow burns, then there are drags. This one drags. Tansy and Selene are old friends who had a summer of mischief 20 years prior. Selene resurfaces with a favor to ask Tansy. I thought this was a thriller, but it reads more like a drama. No big surprises here. Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. 3 Stars

There was a summer where Tansy was drawn in by the brightness and energy and sharp-edged determination of one of her fellow summer workers at a spa, Selene. A woman with a million stories of the life she used to live, fantastic and fascinating and intoxicating. But even the greatest of summers end and this one ended with a murder that Selene convinced her they needed to cover up, and the guilt drove her as far away as she could get. Twenty years later, Selene has returned to demand Tansy help her look into her daughter relationship, insisting that Jupiter’s boyfriend is abusive and that Tansy owes her and digging into her life both to make sure she does as asked and, possibly, in a desperate bid to mend a friendship lost. Can Tansy work around her former friend’s demands and keep her professional integrity? Does she want to?
Jody Gehrman’s The Summer We Buried just doesn't work for me on any level. It was marketed as a thriller but then mostly dealt with the protagonist's personal trauma and drama as her literally crazy former best friend comes back into her life nearly twenty years later to demand she help break up Selene's daughter's relationship or else. And also Selene’s younger brother is hot and that will take up so much page space.

The antagonist really seems to be Selene and her personality disorder more than the daughter's abusive boyfriend or the situation Tansy has found herself in in her life. Selene marches in and makes demands, holding the events of a summer long ago over protagonist's head as a threat, trying to make Tansy do her bidding despite her professional duties to her patients. She goes to Tansy's house with no warning or indication that she should know where Tansy lives to push her to do the thing. She's clearly a character who needs serious help, but then Tansy just goes along with it, telling herself that if she does a little of what Selene wants then she can dig her feet in later and not go all the way. She even convinces Selene's younger brother the professor/government agent/ person who lived with this shit for years of this path. It's frustrating and sad rather than thrilling.

And the romance with the younger brother isn't any better. It feels too fast, too included because the author needed to fill page space, too much like the ending had been set already and it needed to be there for that ending to work. It does not even feel like it has a solid foundation, Tansy never really explains what Selene has on her because 'a man just couldn't understand' and goes on to keep hiding more and more from him as the plot continues. It's the kind of thing that leaves me feeling like the ending should have been the half way point of the story, with the next half dedicated to the whole house of cards falling in around everyone's heads.

That ending is a fair chunk of my frustration too. With Selene's mental health issues being such a major part of what ties everything together and drags the various characters into place, the ending is simultaneously the only way the book could have ended and also feels totally unearned. The pathos for Selene could have been there, should have been there, but a late story character revelation tears a good chunk of it away. I know nothing about borderline personality disorder or how it effects people who have it, Selene could easily be an accurate bad case scenario for it and I would not know, but it feels like a depiction of refusing to deal with their mental illness and forcing someone else to fix the problem they caused. Selene is gone and Tansy is left holding everything together for her and cleaning up the mess. And I hate it.

Which really is the problem here, The Summer We Buried could be the most sensitive portrayal of someone dealing with a friend having bpd in recent writing, but it just does not work for me personally. It feels overly dramatized, very made for TV movie, in its plot and character work. I would probably be kinder to it without the suddenly aggressively hetero romance and the weird gender essentialist reason for bad communication, but I cannot know how much kinder I would be.

Which is a real shame because there are several moments where the author will find space for a lush description of a landscape or will pull Tansy away from the Selene drama and let her interact with a different set of characters, allowing for moments of warmth and camaraderie that feel so much more real and solid than any of the rest of the book. It is clear that Gherman has skill as an author, but I do not know that she is an author for me. I give The Summer We Buried a two out of five. I think I would try Gherman’s writing again, but in a different genre.