Selena and Tansy were great friends many years ago. After a disturbing event, Tansy cut Selena out of yer life. Now, Selena is back and wants something from Tansy. Selena will stop at nothing in order to help her daughter, including blackmailing Tansy.
I would class this book as a slow burn mystery rather than a thriller. I did love it regardless of that. There were a few too many coincidences for it to be truly believable, but again I loved it anyway. I was gripped right from the start and couldn't wait to see what played out.

Many thanks to netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the arc.

I'm torn about how I feel about this one.. The description had me thinking that this was going to be way more sinister and dark than it actually was. And the ending wasn't one that I was really impressed with. I was left like, "wait that's all?" and that's never a good thing for me. It was a decent book though, and it didn't take me long to finish.

Twenty years ago, Tansy was drawn to Selene’s hard edges, her grit, and her knack for survival. Since then, the confused tangle of guilt about covering up a murder shattered their friendship, and even now, at thirty-eight, Tansy has never come to terms with what happened that night.

THE SUMMER WE BURIED
By Jody Gehrman

Overall I did enjoy this book but I have to mention that this may be one of the slowest books I’ve read in a while and I think it has a lot to do with the length in the chapters. I read this on my kindle some of the chapters were upwards of 30-45 minutes long which I really do not like, personally. I prefer short chapters that keep you wanting to read more and more. This book did quite the opposite for me.

While this read as more general fiction, compared to thriller there was definitely a couple of twists I didn’t see coming and it was suspenseful at times.

I found the romance part of the story line to act more like filler and unnecessary to the plot for the most part. Same with the connection to some characters mentioned mostly in the beginning of the book. A lot of lose ends in my opinion.

If you like a good slow burn, I think you’ll like this book! If I didn’t like the ending as much as I did, I may have a different opinion. But in the end I did enjoy it.

Big thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an ARC of The Summer We Buried by Jody Gehrman in exchange for my honest review. #NetGalley #TheSummerWeBuried

This was a fairly gripping story, but I don't think it was really a thriller; it was more of a family drama. There weren't a lot of secrets to be revealed, and I kept waiting for the big twist, only to be disappointed when it failed to arrive. Having loved The Girls Weekend, this book didn't meet my expectations, but it was still pretty enjoyable.

Tansy Elliot, a 38yr old college guidance counselor, gets a surprise visit from ex-friend Selene Rathbone—whom she hasn’t seen in eighteen years (& for good reason!) Selene has come to collect on a debt. Her daughter Jupiter is a student there, and she wants Tansy to talk Jupiter into leaving her (supposed) abusive boyfriend. Tansy refuses, so Selene threatens to expose what they did eighteen years earlier.

And so begins a trip down the rabbit hole of Tansy and Selene’s shattered past, and finding the truth about Jupiter and Colton’s relationship.

About—friendship, unexpected romance, the relationships between complex characters, strained family dynamics, manipulation.. and MURDER. YES.. Selene was a total mess, but the love she felt for her daughter was undeniable.

Jody Gehrman writes such compelling character driven stories that she’s become an auto buy for me. It’s a good one!

*Much thanks to Crooked Lane Books for kindly approving an arc! All opinions are my own.

This was a story about the secrets in the ground.

This was an interesting one and I'm struggling a bit to rate it. It wasn't a bad book by any means, but elements of the mental health portrayal didn't land for me, and I think it impacted my overall enjoyment. I did feel the tension was well crafted, and I thought the ending was thoughtfully executed. Overall, if you're looking for a quick thriller with an interesting enough mystery element, I think this is a good choice!

Thank you so much Netgally & Crooked Lane Books for the earc!

Tansy thought- hoped anyway- she'd never see Selene again, But now, 20 years later, Selene has shown up at her office demanding that Tansy find a way to break up the relationship between her daughter Jupiter and her boyfriend. Tansy and Selene have a secret that Selene threatens to spill but really- how does a college counselor split up a young couple? Yes, the boyfriend is a bad guy but Jupiter doesn't want her mom involved. Selene's brother Zach shows up and Tansy finds, well, you know how that's going to go. Selene is a nasty person, Tansy perhaps a bit of a sponge and poor Jupiter ... Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, This is a tad implausible in spots but it's also a very entertaining read.

This was an interesting slow burn domestic violence thriller, than a fast paced on the edge of your seat. ⁣
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Gehrman handled mental health problems and domestic violence in a graceful way, with a writing style that left you feeling like you were having a chat with these characters instead of truly reading about their story, which I enjoyed.⁣
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The beginning of this story is fairly slow but you do get a lot of good back story information about the characters. ⁣
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The suspense of finding out what secret Selene was holding over Tansy’s head that kept Tansy sort of fearful made you want to read to the end. ⁣
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Overall, if you like a slow burn suspense this is for you; but if you want more intensity, this isn’t it.⁣
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The narration was really well done; as I did go back and forth between reading and listening. I always like when a narrator changes their voice so you know a different character is talking. ⁣
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3.75-4 ⭐️⁣
Thank you @crookedlanebooks for an ARC!

I enjoyed The Summer We Buried, but towards the end it became a little unbelievable and I lost the focus I had for the first three quarters of the story.

Entertaining read, but full of far fetched, unrealistic happenings. I was left scratching my head at some of the situations. I wanted some of the characters to grow a backbone and act like an adult. A few twists, which I saw coming, but didn’t expect the ending as it was.

I found some scenes in the book, Tansy’s ex and a sex scene, totally unnecessary and felt like it was just thrown in for something different.

The ten year age difference sets up the friendship between young, impressionable Tansy and the unhinged, manipulative Selene. One dark night everything changes, and Tansy finds it in herself to end the friendship. Twenty years later, Tansy is a college counselor who receives a threatening visit from Selene with an ultimatum. This sets the tone for the rest of the story.

Thanks to Ms. Gehrman , Crooked Line Books and NetGalley for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.

It’s been twenty years since Tansy last saw her once BFF, Selene and Tansy would prefer it to be twenty more! Their friendship ended with a skeleton in the closet that Tansy would like to see stay there. When Selene shows up out of the blue asking for a favor, one that she says Tansy owes her, Tansy does not want to get entangled with Selene again. When Selene threatens to spill the beans about their prior life, Tansy reluctantly agrees. Soon Tansy is connected to Selene and her family in ways she couldn’t have imagined and when tragedy stikes again, Tansy is once again right smack in the middle. A slow burn, twisty good read from Jody Gehrman.

Tansy is a good friend. However, Selene is a demanding, exacting and exhausting friend. After the friendship was severed, after one horrific summer event, Selene reappears in her life to demand payback. Tansy is sucked back into the vortex of the Selene storm.
I read this book fast. The narrative was engaging and I wanted to see where all of this would need up.
With friends like Selene, you don’t need enemies.

4.25 stars

I liked this one! It was fun, more tense than suspenseful, and a good story. Some of the characters and plot points were a bit predictable, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment at all. A couple chapters out, I thought I knew how it was going to end…and I did, for the most part, but some of the finer details were still unexpected. I’ll have to look for more from this writer!

Last year, I read and reviewed Gherman's The Girls Weekend and found it to be entertaining, but not entirely plausible. Overall, I feel like this book is a more solid offering, albeit still occasionally far fetched.

The novel is a slow burn, featuring Tansy, a college counselor, who is visited one day by Selene, an unhinged friend from her distant past with whom she shares a dark secret. Selene insists that Tansy help her to break up the relationship between Selene's 18-year-old daughter Jupiter and her boyfriend, who Selene insists is controlling and isolating her daughter. Tansy, because she's a bit scared of Selene revealing their secret to the world, decides to befriend Jupiter, but only to provide a safe space for Jupiter to talk.

There are a couple of things that surprised me throughout the book, and a twist or two that I didn't see coming. But I had difficulty getting past Tansy's paranoia that Selene would reveal their secret. Although the secret is dark, I couldn't find a way that it could ever be tied back to the two of them, regardless of what Selene might say.

I thought that the romance storyline and the subsequent sex scenes were filler and unnecessary to the plot, and also the throwaway scenes with Tansy's ex and his new flame. They really didn't add anything to the plot and were honestly a bit distracting. I like my thrillers filled with suspense and mystery, not all of this extra stuff.

I listened to the audiobook of this one, and the narrator Emily Ellet (who also narrated The Girls Weekend) did a great job of giving the characters distinct voices. I did have to speed up the narration because her regular speaking speed is quite languorous.

Overall, if you can get past the slow buildup and you have a tolerance for romance in your suspense novels, then you might like this one. The storyline is overall entertaining and kept me invested to see how everything would play out in the end. and I wasn't disappointed.

This book was very much a slow burn thriller. I had a hard time connecting with it early on, but it picked up for me a lot about a third of the way into it.

My main issue with this book was just the character development. I would have loved multiple POVs, especially from Selene and Jupiter. It was hard to care too much because I had trouble connecting with anyone. Some plot threads also felt unnecessary and irrelevant by the end of the book. I think it would have been much stronger with a little bit of editing.

Overall, I thought the story was predictable, but I was still interested on exactly how it would end. I definitely recommend this for people who like slower paced thrillers.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy! This book is out on March 8th.

Twisty story about two friends and the ties that bind them. When Tansy and Selene were young they were the best of friends, even with a ten year age difference between them. Their friendship is eventually shattered in the aftermath of an unspeakable incident. Years later Selene shows back up in Tansy’s life demanding help with her daughter who may be in danger. Twisted, slow burn of a story that is well written and impossible to put down.

3 stars

A story about a bound between friends, about promises, blackmail, motherhood, abuse and friendship.

A long time ago Selene helps Tansy to get out of a very bad situation, but her acts are a bit too violent. There is a muted pact between the two friends who don't see each other for 20 years, until Selene swings back in Tansy's life asking to cash on a favour. She strongly believes that her daughter is in a relation with an abusive man so she's asking for help to convince her daughter Jupiter to leave the guy.

The story is good and promising but there are too many things that makes the reader wonder how is this happening. From Tansy getting involved with Jupiter's uncle and hiding from Jupiter her long friendship with her mother.

The ending was as well a bit far fetched in my opinion. Not a bad book, but it could have been better.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me to read this nice book!

A compelling, interweaving web of toxic relationships, but are the characters actions fuelled by love or selfish manipulation? This story kept me constantly guessing through the unravelling of lies and the changing motivations of each of the individual characters. Definitely a book which stays with you after reading it and makes you question human nature and the complicated relationships we have. A complete page turner, was disappointed when I finished reading it!

This story follows Tansy, a college guidance counselor who seems to be content with her quiet life now which is a much different life than the free-spirited life she was leading 20 years prior. However, when Selene - her best friend 20 years ago until Tansy cut her out of her life - comes to visit Tansy and collect on an old debt, Tansy's life will never be the same. Selene's daughter, Jupiter, goes to school at Tansy's college and Selene wants Tansy to convince Jupiter to break up with her boyfriend who Selene suspects is abusive. Tansy initially declines but when Selene brings up their shared past, Tansy finds herself drawn back into Selene's intoxicating circle of adrenaline and emotions. Tansy thinks she can stay on the edges and satisfy Selene's demands while also remaining professional but as more and more secrets get revealed, it is clear Tansy is in deeper than she expects.

TW/CW: suicide, domestic violence, toxic friendships, sexual assault, mental health

I really enjoyed the characters in this book and I loved how small but connected the cast was. This is really a story about connections - friendships, familial, professional, and romantic - and it was interesting to see how all of those connections can really work their way into someone's life. The book opens with Selene's visit to Tansy at her work and we immediately get the tension between the two women but we don't find out exactly why until a bit later. I would have loved more flashbacks to Tansy and Selene's relationship 20 years prior, especially since so much of the current plot directly revolved around them having this really intense friendship. I thought Tansy's character was really interesting at these different 'phases' in her life. I think a lot of the female protagonists in these domestic suspense/thrillers often fall into a few certain tropes (wine-drunk, obsessive, etc). And I think if the story would have been set a year or two after the friendship breakup, then we might have seen Tansy fulfill that particular role. However, choosing to set the story 20 years after the breakup gave both characters enough time to move on and find new things to do with their lives. I think this meant that the characters we get are much more well-rounded and less prone to drama and makes them more compelling to follow, in my opinion.

I do want to mention briefly that one character suspects Selene has borderline personality disorder (BPD). They explicitly state Selene has never been officially diagnosed but the character believes she fits the criteria well. From what I know from listening to people who have borderline/a family member with borderline personality disorder it does seem like Selene fits the clinical criteria. However, I am not a mental health professional and have no personal experience with BPD so I can't entirely speak to the representation. The surrounding characters who have a pretty extensive history with Selene's emotional swings and outbursts do sometimes come off as dismissive of her and the way Selene's story ends isn't exactly the most uplifting for any readers who might be struggling in a similar way to Selene.

I really loved the pacing of the book and how snappy it was despite not a whole lot, plot-wise, happening until the ending. We are following Tansy's POV though the book and in the beginning she's pretty unsure about getting involved. However, Gehrman does a fantastic job of dropping in new characters or plot information at just the right time that Tansy really has no choice but to keep going. The forward momentum in the story starts with Selene, but soon Tansy also becomes individually invested and curious in Jupiter's situation outside of Selene's influence. There's also some great push/pull moments with the mystery of the story (is Jupiter's boyfriend abusive or is Selene overreacting) which also kept me wanting to read more. The story really picks up with the ending which only really works because of how much character and relationship building the story has done up to that point.

My one gripe about the story is that it wasn't a suspenseful/thrilling as I think it is being marketed as. The description gives away the event in Tansy and Selene's past that Selene keeps basically blackmailing Tansy about but we get the full story pretty early on in the book and it didn't read as intense as I was expecting. I was expecting something much more "I know what you did last summer" vibes. I don't think the crime nor the stakes were built up enough to explain Selene coming to collect on a debt twenty years later. I also didn't buy that Selene was ever a real threat to Tansy. I could very well see Selene taking matters into her own hands and doing something drastic, but I didn't see how Tansy would get wrapped up in it. I think if we saw more scenes of them together 20 years ago before things went bad and we were able to see how magnetic Selene was for Tansy then maybe I would be more believing of the current-day situation. I also didn't feel like the stakes in the story were ever really high enough (until the ending). Until about the 70% point, this felt much more like a general fiction book about complicated relationships than a suspense/thriller. I've seen some reviews call this a 'slow burn' suspense which I suppose would fit but I like my slow burns to have a creeping sense of tension and danger which I just wasn't getting. When I sit back and look at all the plot points, everything I would want from a suspense novel is there but the writing just didn't connect the dots for me.

I think the ending will be hit or miss for readers but I really enjoyed it. I do feel like it was the strongest and most interesting part of the story because of all the groundwork that was done previously. I think the ending could have been even stronger if some of my issues with the tension I mentioned previously were done differently. I do think the ending will require a bit of suspension of disbelief but maybe if you're a reader who connected more with the story and really believed in the tension and conflict between Tansy and Selene it would come across more natural. It was a bittersweet ending for sure and the type where you're really hoping all the characters will get a happy ending but as the walls start to close in it becomes more and more obvious that can't happen.

Overall, I enjoyed the read although it felt much more like a general fiction book than a suspense/thriller. I loved the characters and complicated relationships but found the tension really lacking.

Thanks NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is March 8, 2022