This short excerpt sets up well for what appears to be an intriguing story! I can already tell how the author plants seeds of mystery, such as with Ollie’s apparent estrangement from his best friends and the cryptic letters pointing to something much more sinister going on on the island of Anchor’s Mercy. I’ve never read anything by Ryan La Salma, but I may give this one a try. Thanks to PUSH for access to this sample!

Well, I'm definitely intrigued. I'm still trying to figure out my footing when it comes to horror books and, while I'm not sure adult horror is for me, I've really enjoyed YA horror before, and I think this one could be a success as well. It's hard to give it a star rating based on the small amount of pages I've read but my first impression was a very positive one!

In this except we meet our main character Ollie and his mother, Gracie, who are returning to their home in Anchor's Mercy island after Gracie went into cancer remission. Their relationship was very well established from the start and I'm curious about how it could evolve from there. We also meet another boy, Sam, who seems to be going to the island for vacation but I think there's more to his story to unpack. The excerpt ends with a journal page from a scientist sent to the island following a pandemic that appears to have happened after the events of the first chapter. I love this kind of double narration and the use of journal entries in story. It's safe to say that I've added this book to my ever-growing TBR and I can't wait to get to it once it comes out.

An excellent excerpt from the beginning of the novel. The main character's story is immediately compelling, and the researcher's journal notes were an incredible addition that hooked me from the start. My only complaint is that it wasn't longer, but I will be picking this up as soon as it's released!

Long live queer horror!

Short excerpt so I don't have much to go off of but I trust Ryan La Sala and was intrigued by the mystery it was beginning to present.

What can I say other than I’m obsessed!! I was totally engrossed throughout the first few chapters provided and absolutely can’t wait for the release!

La Sala’s ‘The Honeys’, was stellar and this sample demonstrates ‘The Dead of Summer’ is shaping up to be another hit. The writing style is engrossing, with a solid balance of dialogue and internal monologue, providing clear information of character backgrounds in a non-heavy-handed fashion. Ollie is immediately compelling and I am eager to see how his relationship with his mother develops.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC excerpt!

A great sample of the beginning of the book in a few excerpts. I am definitely excited to read the whole book.

I am not usually a thriller girl, but I was recommended this author by a good friend, and when I saw that this sample was put on NetGalley I was just so ready to get to it. I was not disappointed! I'm super intrigued now and definitely need to get this book when it releases, because what I got to read had me enraptured.



Thank you to NetGalley and Scholastic for an excerpt of this upcoming release.

I read an excerpt of the first couple chapters and I’m already hooked. I can’t wait for the book to be published.

In The Dead of Summer we are following Ollie, who left home, a small island known as Anchor Mercy, off the coast of Maine. Ollie and his mother lived on the mainland for about a year due to his mother, Gracie, who was battling cancer and was receiving treatment on the mainland. The book starts with their return to Anchor Mercy. There is a tropical storm headed their way, and Ollie has a feeling, it will be the end of them.

I’m so excited to get the full book, this sampler was not enough, I need the whole damn book.

It’s queer, it’s suspenseful, it’s thrilling, it’s sci-fi?

I must have this. I am chomping at the bars of my enclosure. I will die without it.

I follow Ryan La Sala on Threads and they keep describing this book as being about “eldritch horrors from the sea.” Do I know what eldritch means? Nope. Am I terrified of water, plagues, death, cancer, grief, and pretty much every other thing mentioned in the summary of THE DEAD OF SUMMER? Yeah. Am I still going to devour this? FOR CERTAIN.

How many times can I say “I’m a massive baby and I don’t usually seek out horror, but…” in horror reviews before I finally accept that that’s not true anymore? I think it’s today. Because I’m seeking this out. Not much happens in this sampler chapter, but it doesn’t have to - it’s just enough to tell me that this is not just horror; it’s literary horror. Horror written by someone who is trying to do more than just write a scary story about haunted coral or whatever.

AND I WANT IT.

I will give Ryan my first unborn child for a whole copy of this book.

The excerpt 100% intrigued me. I love that the author integrated horror aspects SO early on. It pulls the reader in and I NEED MORE.

Ollie seems like the sweetest boy and if you hurt him, I WILL CRY RYAN. But also the other unnamed MC? And the whole boat thing?!

You have SO many elements ( in the best way) that I know are going south. All in all I am super excited to read the final version!!

Requested before realizing this was a expert so I will not be reviewing this book u til the full book is released

The Dead of Summer certainly sets the tone right away! It's hard for me to imagine a parent insisting that their child call them by their name, but I'm sure these people exist. For me, this makes Gracie harder to like and appreciate, so I'd be interested in seeing where it goes, if anywhere. (OK, nevermind, she literally tries to give Ollie alcohol. Gracie sucks).

Also, really, Ollie? He falls a little bit in love immediately??? I hope not. It is cute that both he and Sam play piano, though, I'll give the book that.

Not totally sure if I'll read the book when it's published, but I am intrigued!

I love Ryan La Sala’s work, and this release was already high on my list of anticipated reads, but after reading this excerpt I’m even more hyped! I was vibing with the intro and getting to know the characters and this island setting and then bam, it hits you with this contagion event that will happen and the mystery surrounding it. I’m totally hooked and left counting the days until I can pick up my copy.

I read an excerpt of this even though I typically only read sapphic books. I’d previously read The Honeys by Ryan La Sala and loved it, so I was curious to get a little taste of something else written by Ryan. I wasn’t disappointed. Even just reading the excerpt, I was hooked and wanted to read more… might have to make an exception and have this be one of my few non-sapphic books of the year…

(Hard to give a rating considering it’s such a small portion, but going with 4 stars because it had me hooked from the beginning.)

4/10 for initial intrigue



The Dead of Summer – EXCERPT SAMPLER by Ryan La Sala

Format: e-ARC (Sampler) | Release Date: September 16 2025 (Book 1 of a duology)
Genre: Queer YA Horror | Apocalyptic/Dystopian

My Thoughts
I really wish I had paid closer attention before requesting this—I didn’t realize it was just a short excerpt. I have a thing for zombie–apocalyptic–alien invasion–dystopian type stories, so the premise had me curious.

That curiosity is honestly less about the quality of this snippet and more because I’ve heard great things about Ryan La Sala’s other works. I get that this is a pre-release sample and not the final version, but there were quite a few typos and formatting hiccups for something only a few pages long. The syntax in parts felt like an initial pitch draft.

What Worked
It didn’t really grab me until the end of Ollie’s chapter—there’s a flicker of eerie tension as they approach the island and spot the Navy hospital ship. From there, the tone shifts dramatically to another POV: a scientist aboard that ship, giving us a flash-forward to a few weeks after the storm approaching in Ollie’s chapter. That structure did spark some intrigue about the mystery and the stakes.

What Didn’t Work (For Me)
The mother–son dynamic between Ollie and Gracie didn’t sit right with me. Gracie survives cancer, then essentially tosses aside her role as “mom,” telling Ollie they’re now friends and on a first-name basis. To me, this came across as selfish—Ollie thought he was going to lose his mom to illness, only to “lose” her anyway when she decided she no longer wanted the responsibility of being a parent. This wasn’t endearing or empowering; it just felt like she abandoned him emotionally.

Most of the other characters in this excerpt didn’t catch my interest. We meet Sam—a stranger and likely love interest for Ollie—who seems positioned to both relate to and contrast him, maybe to spark a YA-typical character growth arc. But with so little page time, that connection hasn’t landed yet.

Ollie’s old friend group is briefly mentioned, but the reason for their falling-out remains a mystery. There’s potential here, but it’s hard to feel invested without more context.

Final Impression
This excerpt didn’t pull me in the way I’d hoped. As far as hooks go, the opening chapter spent so much time in Ollie’s head, focused on a mother–son dynamic I personally didn’t enjoy, that it was hard for me to feel any stakes. The setting never came alive for me beyond the ferry scene, and I think more could have been done to establish the atmosphere and foreshadow what’s to come. Even when they disembark, the focus stays on the absence of Ollie’s old friends and the secret he hasn’t told his mother. On paper, that could be an intriguing way to build mystery and tension, but in this excerpt the execution just didn’t land for me.

There were glimmers of tension and intrigue near the end of the excerpt, especially with the shift to the scientist’s POV aboard the Navy hospital ship, but they weren’t enough to outweigh my overall lack of engagement. I would still be curious to see if the full book develops the setting, characters, and stakes in a way that works better for me, but based on these few pages alone, it was not an enjoyable read.

I wish I had paid more attention to this one before requesting it to notice that it wasn’t the full book. I didn’t hate the excerpt but I typically need more before I can give a a fair review. I am interested in reading the rest of the book but that’s all I can say at this point

I loved the premise of this book - a summer getaway of healing and relaxation for Ollie and his mom, of course in a horrible way! The excerpt that was released didn’t do it for me; I had to force myself to finish it. I’ve enjoyed La Sala’s other books, but this one didn’t draw me in. I had a hard time believing that his mother just wanted to go forward as friends with Ollie and not be in a mothering role. There wasn’t enough intrigue or foreshadowing to keep me picking it back up and the pace was slow. I’d love to believe that the ending is what really makes this book, but I won’t be picking it up to find out. Based on the size of the excerpt, I’m not even sure that’d I’d even recommend this to anyone since as it was, there was very little conflict or plot.

The chapter sample sets an atmospheric tone with the summer mystery vibe, which is good. However, the writing felt a bit slow and heavy and annoying for just an introduction, making it hard to get fully invested right away. The characters didn’t stand out much, and the plot didn’t grab me strongly in this short excerpt. While the writing style shows potential, I’d need more to really want to continue reading or giving this book higher rating.

Anchor’s Mercy is Ollie Veltman’s island. People venture from all over to see the beauty of the island, the welcoming beauty and queer culture is like no other, and Ollie wouldn’t have it any other way. But something is deeply wrong with this island, and something keeps rising out of the waves onto the beach. Will Ollie be able to get to the bottom of this horrifying mystery and save his island, and the people in it?

This excerpt was amazing! La Sala gives you just enough to keep you guessing and flipping page after page, hanging on to each word. While I was only given an excerpt of this novel, I will certainly be thinking about it until it is finally released!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me this excerpt in exchange for my honest review.

This sampler of the upcoming Dead of Summer leaves the reader with tons of questions and the desire to know more. Ollie and his mother, whom he calls Gracie, return to the town of Anchor’s Mercy after his mother’s brush with cancer. Gracie is kind of overbearing and inappropriate, and Ollie seems a bit tired of her, and we find that after she began to respond to the chemo, she started to become a different person, more positive and reliant on cliches. Ollie seems to think that the island itself made her sick, although she brushes off his concerns. Apparently in Anchor’s Mercy, quite a lot of people get sick, and quite a lot of people die.

The reader is left with a great deal of questions after reading this first chapter. Was it the decision to leave the island that allowed his mother to get better? What happened between Ollie and his friends on the island that made him reluctant to return? Why is there a giant white ship parked by the island? And what’s going on with that tropical storm?

We do get some answers in the next chapter. There’s a jarring shift in tone to a new voice, that of a PhD student with the code name QUERENT-2. We find that four days after Tropical Storm Raquel hit Anchor’s Mercy, the island was placed under emergency quarantine. An attempt was made to evacuate, but less than two weeks after the storm hit, the island’s population was declared “lost.” However, QUERENT-2 finds out that there is indeed a survivor, and they need to interview them and find out just exactly what went wrong in Anchor's Mercy.

Dead of Summer is sure to be a great read, and I can’t wait to read more than just this excerpt.