Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an advanced electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Faith has been dating David Clarke for about a year when she is invited to spend the summer in his family's mansion on Hadley Island. The Clarke family is famously rich, and secretly pretending that one of their son's friends, Alice Gallo, didn't die during their 4th of July party fifteen years ago. When the Clarkes decide to host the party again after all this time, suspicion arises, and is only added to when Orla O'Connor, Alice's former best friend, returns to the island too.

I thought I knew where this book was going within the first few chapters, but thankfully I was wrong. I had my suspicions before the big reveal/plot twist but I still enjoyed it and was satisfied with the story.

This book is out on July 22nd!

CW: death, kidnapping

Dead of Summer ☀️

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Pub Date: July 22, 2025

Orla returns to her family home several years after her best friend Alice disappeared to put the house on the market. Orla doesn’t expect to run into her childhood crush, David. Or his beautiful girlfriend Faith. Will their summer back on Hadley island bring up the truth from many summers past?

This was a perfect summertime read. The island setting with the vibes of a small town where everyone knows everything was well done. I was easily hooked into the mystery, and to figure out why each of the three POVs were included for the story. I did struggle a little with the writing style switching mid-chapter from present to past tense without warning.

Ultimately the ending really didn’t deliver for me. Everything felt very rushed and chaotic. I even tried to go back at times, thinking I missed something. The copy I read was an ARC, so maybe it still needed to be revised further? While a few things were predictable, I do think this book has a lot of potential for a fun summer mystery, that ending just needs to be sorted out and clarified to really nail it.

I gave Dead of Summer four stars and absolutely flew through it. Orla heads back to Hadley Island ten years after her best friend vanished, only to find flickering lights in Alice’s abandoned house and then someone else goes missing. Suddenly Orla, Faith (her old crush’s new girlfriend) and Henry (the island recluse everyone whispers about) are hunting for the truth. The shifting points of view keep things moving, the two ruined houses and windswept shore deliver perfect eerie vibes, and the contrast between the privileged and the struggling locals adds real punch. Trigger warning for child sex trafficking. Big thanks to NetGalley and Atria Publishing for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This book had such an epic plot. I liked how it started and the speed at which it all progressed. Really loved the main characters too but the twists were the best part of all with this book. I felt the suspense building as I read. While I read it in a day, it was not for lack of content. This book truly is a must read that you will not want to put down even for a minute!

Sadly I was not able to finish this book. I clicked on it to read and it said no longer available. I thought I had until August 5 which was the archive date. I will be reading it when it comes out! I love this author.

Dead of Summer is the perfect popcorn thriller with summer vibes.

Orla hasn’t been back to her childhood home on Hadley Island in a decade. She has been avoiding the secluded New England island as she doesn’t want to revisit repressed memories of her teenage best friend, Alice, who vanished without a trace. Orla and Alice planned their entire lives around each other, down to moving to NYC to become artists. Unfortunately, Orla feels guilty that she got to live the life Alice always wanted.

David, a childhood friend of Orla and Alice’s, returns to Hadley Island every summer. This year he brings his girlfriend and so-to-be-fiancée, Faith, with him. Faith was expecting a 2-month long vacation of sun, sand, and romantic dinners, while David’s father had other plans for him. Finding herself alone and bored, Faith starts digging into the past of Hadley Island.

The idyllic setting of the remote Hadley Island is gorgeous and eerie at the same time. Multiple POVs allows for the tension to build while secrets are slowly revealed, and we found out what exactly happened to Alice all those years ago. Despite some predictability to the story, I found it to be a quick page-turner and highly recommend for your next beach read!

Don’t forget to grab your copy on July 22, 2025!

Thank you Netgalley and Atria for my ARC!

I was excited to read this but it just didn't land for me. I figured out the mystery quickly and kept waiting for a more engaging story.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

This is a super twisty, engaging mystery set on a summer island enclave. Most of the characters were pretty unlikeable (mainly the Clarke family and Faith at times) but I was still invested in just how dark they ultimately were. Very dark, it turned out. I liked the addition of Orla as both one of the main points of view and a somewhat unreliable narrator. She clearly played a role in the disappearance of her best friend Alice but what role? And how did Alice end up in so much trouble? I did figure out the final twist fairly early on but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book. I really liked how the author wove the ending together and it was a satisfying conclusion. Thanks to Jessa Maxwell, Atria Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 rounded up. I've read Maxwell's other work and usually get left feeling like I can't figure out the plot until she takes me there at the twist, but this one I feel like I solved far too early, specifically for Faith's best friend twist. I did find though that there were certainly some Pretty Little Liar's elements with Alice disappearing and Orla living with some form of regret for helping to cover it up. David and his father were very eerie and I felt like the smaller rich town premise was really fun, I just can't place how much more I wanted in terms of Alice and how she managed with the hush money more?

I've enjoyed the author's prior books, so was excited to get an early copy of Dead of Summer - and it didn't disappoint! This book was moody and twisty, but still an easy read. It wasn't my favorite of hers and I didn't love most of the characters, but I was still entertained and wanted to see where things were going. I dropped a star because I guessed a couple of the big twists, but overall, this book was still enjoyable! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

A perfect summer read. It was slow-paced for me but enjoyed the multiple POV's, the twists and turns and the setting.

Perfect thriller to read in one sitting.

Orla O’Connor returns to Hadley Island for the first time in ten years, hoping to quietly clean out her family’s beach house before it's sold. But the island is still haunted by the disappearance of her best friend Alice, and the locals haven’t forgotten—or stopped whispering. As Orla reconnects with the past, Faith, the girlfriend of Orla’s childhood crush David, begins to dig into the island’s secrets, while a reclusive local named Henry watches everything unfold from his telescope. When another person vanishes, the mystery resurfaces and pulls all three deeper into the island’s dark history. I wanted to like this book, and while the writing was solid, the story just didn’t land for me. It felt like not much happened until the end, and I was left wanting more suspense and development throughout.

Orla returns home to sell her parents home. She is also returning to the place where she lost her best friend many years ago. Are people still talking about it? Turns out the answer is yes....

Coastal mystery/thriller easy read a good summer or beach book to have with you. I didn't like this as much as her past books but was still entertained and wanted to see where the story went. I want to thank NetGalley and Atria Books for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoy the plot and characters of the previous two Jessa Maxwell novels. While the writing was still good in Dead of Summer, I struggled to connect with the characters this time. None were very likable, and the plot was almost too simple in a few ways. I liked the setting a lot, as it reminded me of home. But it didn't much matter who killed Alice because the family was too over-the-top, so ultimately, I wasn't rooting for anyone in particular. That said, I did immerse myself in the book and really like the author's other works.

If you're into moody coastal vibes and small-town secrets, this one's for you. It follows Orla, who heads back to her family’s house on a remote New England island ten years after her best friend vanished without a trace. The place is full of gossip, ghosts, and complicated old crushes. Between a reclusive neighbor seeing weird stuff through a telescope and another person suddenly disappearing, things spiral fast into a creepy, twisty mystery. It definitely kept me hooked, but I didn’t give it five stars because some of the twists felt a little too predictable. Still a fun read!

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC of Dead of Summer

3.5 stars

This was a fun little popcorn thriller and a great read while sitting pool (or beach) side.

Set on a secluded coastal island, this story centers around Alice and Orla, neighbors who grew up and were inseparable. They found themselves spending every summer with David, a powerful billionaire's son. One summer, Alice falls in the ocean, never to be seen again. Years later, Orla returns to the island to sell her family's home (and get to the bottom of Alice's disappearance). David is also home for the summer, and this time he has brought along his girlfriend, Faith, for the ride.

This story was told in multiple POVs (Faith, Orla, and Henry) and the twists were enjoyable, albeit somewhat predictable. I really enjoyed the seclusion of Hadley Island and the introduction to several of the locals and getting the background into summers at the island. The conclusion is a slow burn, so you'll have to stay engaged with the story in order to get to the good stuff, but with short chapters and an entertaining story you shouldn't have any problems with that.

A solid thriller, but the twists were pretty predictable. I loved the remote island setting, and the backdrop of rich people behaving badly over their summer retreat. I thought the characters were well developed, even the secondary island resident characters (they totally made me want to move there). I think with a bit more editing, this one would have been more twisty and less predictable. But.....this would be a perfect read for the poolside this summer!

Ehhhh, this story was okay - not quite as good as Jessa's two previous books.

I think the key to the story was her overall writing style. That helped because most of the characters were not likeable.

We had unreliable narrators and I'm not sure - something just didn't give it the pizazz her previous books had.

This is a fun summer mystery and if there were half stars, I'd give DEAD OF SUMMER three and a half stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria for an e-copy of DEAD OF SUMMER to review.

I rate DEAD OF SUMMER three out of five stars.

I predicted almost everything that happened in this book. From the beginning, it came across as highly predictable. If not for Maxwell's engaging writing, I would have given up on it once I started putting pieces together. Because of that engaging writing, I was hoping that at some point, my predictions would have been proven wrong, but sadly, that wasn't the case.

I hate that I could predict everything, as that ruined the experience for me. But I do have to say that if you or someone you know wants to start reading mystery stories, this would be a good one to try.