Audiobook review - Postcards From Summer is an excellent choice for a summer read! Mixed with fun and sadness all readers will find something to love in this title. Mystery readers will enjoy the puzzle of Lexi's origins and figuring out who her father is, with a little twist near the end. Hand this one to fans of Summer of Lost Letters.

I want to first thank the publishers and Netgally for the opportunity to listen to this book as an audiobook ACR.

I think my number one complaint about this book is how long it is. This is a 20 hour long audiobook.

This book follows Lexie who at 17 goes on an adventure to find out who her mother was. At 5 years old her mother passed and her grief ridden father couldn’t bare to share his wife with his daughter.

As Lexie finds out more, we start seeing chapters from her mothers point of view at age 17.

While this story is beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking it probably didn’t need to be as long as it was. The pacing was good so it never felt boring but it was very predictable.

This is a YA which I haven’t read it a while because they are typically predictable. Overall this is a great coming of age story but be prepared to invest sometime into it.

This was a sweet book and I loved it so much! I love YA book because they are just sweet without all the spicy. Thank you for writing such a great book.

ℙ𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕊𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕖𝕣 ʙʏ Cʏɴᴛʜɪᴀ Pʟᴀᴛᴛ

Swipe for synopsis ➡️

“The Notebook meets Love & Gelato in the heart-wrenching novel about a teen who travels To her late mothers majestic summertime home to learn of the romance— and the tragedy— that changed her life forever.”

🌅 then & now
🌅young love
🌅best friends
🌅growing up
🌅family duty
🌅dreams & reality
🌅mystery, secrets & lies
🌅mistakes
🌅difficult discoveries
parental loss

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

As a teen, I believe this would have been five star read for me. As an adult, with my path currently well-paved, it’s less for so. I’ll split the difference with four stars.

I loved the mystery of Lexi’s search for Emma’s (her mother) story through letters, postcards and a mosaic box. She also meets people from her mother’s past that fill in the blanks. Both Emma and Lexi have that optimistic, rose colored, passion of the young. The setting of this beautiful summer island and young friends growing up together is lovely. Until it’s not.

👍Likes:
I liked the passion of these young people. Emma’s artistically soul, her love of her childhood home on the island, and her passion for art. I loved her love for her best friend, JR.

I liked Lexi’s determination to find out more about the mother she lost despite hitting roadblock after roadblock, including her own father that won’t talk to her. I liked how the mosaic box of her mother’s was her guide into the past.

👎Dislikes:
Emma’s and Ryan/Linda’s parents were just so awful and selfish. The injustice of it all was pretty obnoxious.

There was a ton of avoidance and leaving things unsaid. Which I believed led to my third dislike which was …

This story was very long. Like long long. I feel like it could have been much shorter.

I hated that all the lack of communication and the parents pushing their needs on to their own child, inevitably led to what I believe killed her. She was so stressed and panicked from all of the relationship turmoil that her big heart took on, that her heart gave out at a young age.

The writing of this story is beautiful, it’s descriptive and visual. I predicted the discoveries, but the explanations, particularly the ending, made me tear up. Heart-wrenching is indeed the correct description.

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This book was really cute but also had a mix of sadness, want and discovery in it. I loved the story, I didn’t necessarily love the narrator though.

Postcards From Summer has been comped with The Notebook but I've got to also say it reminds me of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares and 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. And with that gorgeous cover, I thought it would be just as fun and full of memorable adventures. I've had it on my tbr for awhile. Well, it's not as light as I was hoping it would be, but it's still an adventure.

Lexi's grandmother she barely knows, passes away and sends Lexi a box of her mom's keepsakes from her own Summer adventure days. This leads Lexi to take off to the same destination in hopes of understanding her mom better because nobody seems to want to talk about her. And that's all Lexi wants.

With a little mystery and a little romance, Postcards From Summer should be on any Summer tbr. Jean Ann Douglass and Bailey Carr are also wonderful narrators.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing and Dreamscape Media for providing me with an audiobook review copy.

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Postcards From Summer by Cynthia Platt

Lexi’s mom died when she was young and her dad clams up every time she asks about her. When a mysterious package arrives for her, Lexi can’t wait to open it away from the prying eyes of her father and step-mother. It’s more than she could have guessed, a mosaic box filled with letters and treasures that belonged to her mother and the news that her grandmother had passed away.

Lexi doesn’t know anything about her grandparents except that they tried to take her away from her dad when her mother died. But maybe with the clues from the box she can piece together her mother’s history. One big clue being Mackinac Island, where her mother spent her summers. Lexi’s step-sister, Chloe, convinces her to go there and find out more about her mother. From there we have dual POV, Lexi looking for information and Emma, Lexi’s mom, in her teen years before she left the island.

Mackinac Island has been on my bucket list for years so I knew I had to read this story. It was a typical YA novel with great love interests, (yes, it has a love triangle but I think it was well done), a beautiful setting, and some mysterious intrigue. I definitely think it was longer than it needed to be, especially since those that read a lot of YA can probably see the plot twists coming from a mile away. I thought Emma’s story line was well developed and it kept me wanting to read more. I was confused by several of Lexi’s decisions but who didn’t make poor decisions as a teen. Overall, I really did enjoy the story and think it makes for a great summer read!

I listened to the audio version and really liked it. At 20 hours in length I was able to get a lot done while listening.

Content Warning: underage drinking, some swearing, teen pregnancy