When I turned the final page, I sat and tried to absorb the feelings and emotions from this impactful and powerful story. Harris has taken a story that needed to be told and ripped my heart to shreds.

Fair warning – you need to be open and willing to read about the aftermath of a sexual assault. Trust me when I say, I was nervous too, but this author takes a tragedy and creates a miracle. It is truly a stunning story.

Harris has taken the raw and gritty and gifted us with heart, compassion, healing, forgiveness, and love. Set aside a quiet weekend and read this with tissues and an open mind. One Summer in Savannah and Harris is amazing and brilliant! Brave and compelling! And that ending is nothing short of bomb-tastic!

This is the best read of 2023 so far! Harris has just put her name in lights!

A stunning and emotional novel about trauma, healing, and love. Sara and Jacob are unforgettable characters!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

One Summer In Savannah is a beautifully articulated book about love, growth, forgiveness and family. Sara returns to her hometown of Savannah, Georgia after being gone for 8 years. Sara was sexually assaulted at 18 years old and as a result has a daughter, Alana. Although sexual assault may be a trigger for some people I think the author wrote about it in a raw and refined manner.

As much as I loved the story itself, there was one big thing that I struggled with and that was how Sara’s father speaks ONLY using poetry. If I was a big fan of poetry I may have understood what he was saying but I’m not so it kind of bothered me. Otherwise I think this was a beautiful story and bonus points for the choice of setting!

Where do I even start?? This book was amazing, heartfelt, heartbreaking and bittersweet all rolled together. I laughed, cried and wanted more when it ended.

I went into this book blindly but it’s basically a story of love and forgiveness. Sara has a secret child she’s been keeping from the world ever since that awful drunken night at a party where she was taken advantage of. Although determined to never set foot in Savannah again, she’s reluctantly back due to the deteriorating health of her father. She finds herself enjoying her time with her family while also slowly getting to know the twin brother of the guy that assaulted her 8 years ago. There’s some type of deep connection between the two of them but will Sara continue to run away from her past or decide to face it head on?

One Summer in Savannah is richly and beautifully written. With quietly complex characters and very real themes of forgiveness that readers will relate to in many ways, the writing is lyrical and the setting of Savannah, Georgia, very alive. It's a story that you think about when you're not reading it and that stays with you long after the last page. Massive kudos to author Terah Shelton Harris for pulling off a difficult topic (the consequences of rape) in a loving, open way. I rooted for all of these characters--an impressive feat!

Many thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark, NetGalley, and Terah Shelton Harris for this advanced copy of the book!

Such a great read! I highly recommend it! First, over the years of being an avid reader, I discovered that I was not into poetry. I loved books, but poetry has never done it for me; however, using poetry in various portions of this book as a means of deep communication and connection to the literary world amongst the characters was such a beautiful touch! Terah did an exceptional job at literally painting a story! The way she used her words made the characters and scenes vivid in my mind as I read. How she described the various settings in Georgia reminded me of what Delia Owens did in Where the Crawdads Sing. The characters were so well-developed and multi-layered. Terah nicely captured Sara and Jacob's stories in this two-person POV storytelling. With the complexities of their histories and current lives, I thought about moral decisions and what I would have done in their situations. It was a very thought-provoking read. The story was about resilience, forgiveness, and strength. And do not get me started on the last sentence of the book. It was so cute and sobering how it ended! Just beautiful!

A beautifully-written, thoughtful, emotional, and unique novel. The premise is quite heavy, so I was a bit anxious at the start, but the tough topics were handled with great care and gave me a lot to think about in terms or forgiveness and justice. I'm not big on poetry, so I sometimes skimmed over those pieces, but I could see how they add to the story. I'll definitely keep an eye out for more books by Terah Shelton Harris.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amazon for the ARC.

Trigger: rape

When Sara was younger she was raped by Daniel and she got pregnant with Alana but had fled Savannah and only her family know about Alana. Now Sara’s Dad is not doing well and she has come back to Savannah but is trying to hide Alana from Daniel’s family so they don’t try to take her, but that’s hard to do when she starts to fall for Daniel’s brother Jacob…

This heartbreaking book was such a good read. Get your tissues ready if you pick this up. It deals with lots of heavy topics but there are also some lighthearted moments. Looking forward to the author’s next book.

📚 Book Review 📚

One Summer in Savannah
by Terah Shelton Harris
@terahsharris
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
(5/5 stars)

This review was almost impossible for me to write, simply because I’ve been left utterly stunned and speechless. This debut novel may be the most exceptional one I have ever read, and I can barely form the coherent sentences necessary to convey my feelings about it. Nothing I say here will do it justice, so I’ll just say what’s foremost on my mind.
The author is up front in her beginning author’s note about the tough subject matter this book covers. Our main character, Sara, was raped as a teenager and becomes pregnant as a result. Believe me when I say this delicate plot was handled with immense care and sensitivity. The assault occurs off-page and almost a decade prior to the story we read here, which allows the reader to be distanced enough from it for it to be digestable. What unfolds is a story about two families forever connected and damaged by what has happened. There are so many layers but they all intertwine and fall together impeccably. I can’t say much in detail without giving spoilers, but this book is best read not knowing much ahead of time anyway.
Simply put...I loved this story, and I loved these characters. They will stay with me for a very long time. The character Jacob in particular will root into your heart so deeply, he’ll never leave. I beg of you not to be put off by the subject matter- what you will gain by reading this book will make it so worth it. When you reach the final page, you’ll want to go right back to the first to start the book all over again. Every word of this book is absolute perfection.
A HUGE thank you to @netgalley and @bookmarked for allowing me to have this advanced copy. I’m eternally grateful.
*Pub date: 7/4/23

Firstly I want to commend the author on writing about such a controversial subject and I was especially thankful of the authors note in the very beginning, it was thoughtful and genuine. This story is written from dual POVs which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed how most of the characters were layerd and I loved the timeline of the 2 main characters.
I didn't like end. It almost felt like info dumping to me and a little unrealistic. Although I know ones journey with SA is different, I didn't like how the main characters stance changed right at the last minute when throughout the entire book she was very head strung on that particular subject.
Overall I did like the book and found myself wanting to know what was going to happen to all the characters in the end. It didn't deliver in the way I thought it would, but I did like it.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This is a beautifully written book dealing with complex relationships within and between families. Characters are well developed and quite unique and memorable. The story moves at a good pace and is hard to put down once you get into it. The main theme is forgiveness and all of its complexities.

Definitely one for your TBR list for 2023.

4.5 stars, rounded down because I rarely give 5 stars.

Will definitely be looking for more from this author.

In her debut novel, One Summer in Savannah, Terah Shelton Harris has taken two people distantly connected by the thread of a common story and interwoven their lives in a way that defies what many might expect, but that is human, believable. The book features an interview with the author, where Harris shares that she wrote this as an exploration of the concept of forgiveness, and has done a stunning job developing the characters, and leading the reader through the many layers and complexities of their lives, both independently and interconnectedly. The story features smartly-written characters, the unique style of conversation-via-poetry presented through a smaller character, and heart-rending scenarios that ring true and will keep you engaged.

Two families – one prominent and powerful – are forever changed by an act of violence. Among their number, two are propelled far from home, one spends years of his life incarcerated, and yet another, unable to stand up under the weight of the prior death of one child and the distance of the other two, ends his life.

Through well-developed characters, Harris gives us insights into the impact of one terrible decision, and how it can ripple across multiple lives. One Summer in Savannah asks you to consider how the victim of a crime continues forward with their life, how this effects their own family, and to offer this same consideration for the family of the perpetrator, a rare perspective. Readers are shown how tragedy can intersect with fear and make us reconsider our lives, and how making space to see each person as their own self (not merely a piece of a larger family unit) can help us better understand ourselves.

I anticipated the reader would explore forgiveness from a first-person perspective, and instead, Harris also shows us through the eyes of others, the shape it can take with different people, the varied timing that each of us requires, and how considering broader context for those we struggle to forgive can help us reach this point. This requires (and is developed through) empathy, trust, vulnerability, and the understanding that one can arrive at forgiveness without any evidence of change or contrition from the offending party. Ultimately, forgiveness is for the harmed, not for the one who caused the harm. It is not an approval or excusing of the wrongdoing; it is freeing oneself from the tethers of anger and condemnation.

Some may find the outcome of the story unrealistic or unbelievable, and that is reasonable; we each bring a unique history to everything we read, and that history informs how we are impacted by the story laid before us. Not everyone could reach the place where Sara and Jacob find themselves, but were they real people, they would likely agree that neither would have ever predicted that their lives would intersect, much less overlap, or how they would come to understand and offer forgiveness. What one could never do, others could; that’s true of most anything we encounter in life. Because of how Harris writes her characters, the humanity she imbues them with, the faults and frailties, in addition to strengths and successes, the outcome of these characters we come to know so well is wholly believable for me. I can’t say if I would find myself reaching the same outcome, but how Harris directs the storyline and where she leaves us as the story closes, does not stretch reason, and could instead force us, the readers, to consider how we see, approach, and offer forgiveness in our own lives.

Thank you so very much for an advance copy!

This book was written so interestingly. Unfortunately for me, I felt like the dad speaking in poetry really threw me for a loop and kept taking me out of the story. And the "falling for the R's brother" was pretty uncomfortable for me.

“Love is never complicated. The circumstances are but never the love.”

This is a stunning debut novel from Terah Shelton Harris coming on July 11th 2023.
Thank you to @netgalley and the publishers for this digital arc.

It's been eight years since Sara Lancaster left her home in Savannah, Georgia. Eight years since her daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara's father falls ill, she's forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was the theme of forgiveness, and of loving those you cannot forgive.

It’s always a refreshing and welcome feeling when a book I’m reading ends up having a theme that I wasn’t expecting enclosed in the plot. In addition to the all encompassing theme of forgiveness that this novel brings to light there were storylines and themes that really kept my interest and tugged at my heart. Poetry and Hosea and (super) math and Alana.

I feel in love with Sara’s family. It almost felt as though I had spent one summer in Savannah with them, making home made pizza and closing up the bookstore every evening ☺️

This is a love story. A really good one. This is more than a romance novel for sure but it’s also my new favorite romance.

Jacob is a swoon-worthy and extremely admirable love interest for our brave heroine.

I thought every character, all the members of Sara and Jacob’s families, were so brightly brought to life by the author. I would LOVE to see this book get made into a movie. I’m picturing Kerry Washington as the leading lady for sure.

5 stars for me. Highly recommend.

I was completely drawn into the storyline of this book. While I'm sure there are other novels about this particular trauma, I thought the storyline was very unique. I thought Jacob was a more well developed character than Sara. I had a hard time picturing her or connecting with her. There were few things that I didn't enjoy. For me, having Naomi as a ghost felt a little far fetched (despite that it wasn't a large part of the storyline). I also had a hard time reading the parts that were interrupted with Hosea's poetry and found myself just skimming over those. Lastly, I don't know about the believability in the ending for a few different reasons. Did they really need to be identical twins? That seemed like too much. Overall, I found it unique and hard to put down and would recommend it to friends (up until the ending).

This novel follows the summer that Sara returns to Savannah after escaping the aftermath of a rape nearly nine years earlier. Although there were some aspects of this novel that were not quite believable (the seeming quick change in Sara's need to protect her daughter Alana from everything, the readiness to open her heart to her rapist's twin brother, Hosea's bizarre style of speaking), the overall sense of the story was a sweet one. To see two tortured souls being willing to forgive those that hurt them and find a way to love was a touching story. Terah Shelton Harris did a beautiful job weaving poetry into the story line (although it was an odd way to communicate) and addressing astrophysics and mathematic equations in a way that seemed to normalize them for a layperson.

This book was a hard read for me. As I victim of rape I just didn't find this story very believable! Forgiveness is one thing but falling in love with his twin... Its been over 30yrs since my assault and I have forgiven him but if I saw him again, his face, there is no way I could look at the same face and see love. I understand the redemption story and it was well written book, but just didn't work for me. Will definitely check out more of her books in the future!

WOW.

Powerful. Haunting. Enchanting. Nuanced. Thought-provoking. Heart-wrenching. So many words to describe this gem of a book.

The biggest, overarching theme in this book is forgiveness, and I think it was done beautifully. I think she described beautifully how nuanced and complex it is, and that it is a long, arduous and ongoing process and journey.

I loved that despite the premise, and themes of hurt, loss and trauma, there were some incredibly soft and tender moments that showed love and affection (in all forms) between the characters.

Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley and author for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was an amazing story told with gorgeous prose with an almost mystical quality that I absolutely adored. To say this book is about forgiveness is an oversimplification. It's about the work of forgiveness and how it's more about healing the person who gives it than absolving someone of their wrongs. It's also about finding love and choosing love when it's hard or comes from an unexpected place. A phenomenal debut.

I moved this up my TBR very quickly and devoured in two sittings. This is not a black and white story- it is full of shades of grey. I did not agree with all the characters' choices- but that's realistic. It underscores the theme that family is not always easy, not always straightforward, and that loyalty in the face of adversity can be unclear and devastating. It is hard to even condense the details of this book into a summary, but I'll do my best:

Sara was sexually assaulted as a teenager, and unbeknownst to anyone but her family, had a child as a result. She fled her hometown of Savannah to escape the powerful, rich family of the man who assaulted her in fear that they would fight for custody of her daughter, Alana. Fast forward 8 years, and Alana is an actual genius of a child- taking after her biological father's family. Sara is told her father is dying of a brain aneurysm and rushes home to be with him, not expecting to stay for months on end making up for lost time with him. In this time, she meets Jacob, who happens to be the twin brother of Daniel, the man who assaulted Sara in her teens. Sara allows him into the bubble of her family and Alana's world, and in the process Jacob and Sara fall hard and deep for each other- which of course presents a myriad of obstacles to say the least. To add another layer of complexity, Daniel is dying of cancer, and Jacob's loyalties are tested as he tries to stay true to Sara and grapples with losing a brother who set his entire family's lives on a spiraling path 8 years ago.

Phew- and that doesn't even cover all the main points that make this book a heart wrenching tale of family, forgiveness, betrayal, and loss- I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has the capacity to read about the rippling effects of sexual assault not only on the victim, but the bystanders. A beautiful and devastating read.