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Mijn zomer vol liefde
Yorkshire, 1984. Twee tienermeisjes blijven tijdens een broeierige zomer vol mijnstakingen en discofeesten achter in een landhuis waar ze zich te buiten gaan aan uitspattingen en geweld. De gebeurtenissen tijdens die zomer geven hun leven een andere wending.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
12 people are currently reading
717 people want to read
About the author
Helen Cross
29 books7 followersHelen Cross (born 1967) is an English author.
She was raised in East Yorkshire and educated at Goldsmiths, University of London (BA) and the University of East Anglia (MA, 1998).
Cross's first novel, My Summer of Love, was published in 2001 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Award in 2002. It was made into an acclaimed film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and starring Emily Blunt and Nathalie Press. She also wrote The Secrets She Keeps, published in 2005. These two books are set in Yorkshire. Her third and latest novel, Spilt Milk, Black Coffee, was published in 2009..
Helen Cross lives in Birmingham with her husband Andy, and her two daughters, Kendra and Cleo. She tutors at the Arvon centre.
- wikipedia
She was raised in East Yorkshire and educated at Goldsmiths, University of London (BA) and the University of East Anglia (MA, 1998).
Cross's first novel, My Summer of Love, was published in 2001 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Award in 2002. It was made into an acclaimed film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and starring Emily Blunt and Nathalie Press. She also wrote The Secrets She Keeps, published in 2005. These two books are set in Yorkshire. Her third and latest novel, Spilt Milk, Black Coffee, was published in 2009..
Helen Cross lives in Birmingham with her husband Andy, and her two daughters, Kendra and Cleo. She tutors at the Arvon centre.
- wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
October 31, 2019
I read this in 2004. I bought the book when I was in Scotland after I watched the movie at a Glasgow movie hall. But read it only after I returned to India. The book is about an erotic friendship between two teenagers. The writer gave me a nice sense of place. It was quite good. But tried a little too hard to be dark and edgy. The ending is vastly different from the one in the movie.
October 7, 2014
I recall being in England in the summer of ’84 & it was indeed hot - not so hot by Iowa standards but British days are longer & people less accustomed. Also I remember that my friends there were split over backing Mrs Thatcher or the striking miners. The heat wave & the miners’ strike form the background for this moving account of a teenaged friendship that turns into a love affair. Relationships across class bounds fascinate me & the dynamic of this one between a publican’s daughter & a fairly posh schoolgirl was gripping. The narrator Mona’s principal amusements are drinking, playing fruit machines (she believes - I expect mistakenly - that with the right touch she can make them pay out jackpots) & a spot of burglary. (She also literally ‘goes to the dogs’!) She’s befriended by Tamsin, who’s been suspended from school & appears to suffer some species of depression - tho’ as we discover both girls to be congenital liars they’re hard to diagnose. Tamsin goes about grieving for a sister she says died of anorexia & indeed for Mona her own body is a major obsession.
By what seems to be happy accident, all the grown ups are away & Tamsin & Mona have a month’s run of a large house. This kind of idyllic setting where friends &/or lovers have the run of a mansion (a college frat house or hall of residence over the holidays is suitable as well, I too vaguely remember) we encounter in The Secret History & The Likeness also; it’s an elysium where the young are free to live out their dreams and fantasies. Of course the idyll can never last, & it doesn’t for Tamsin & Mona. The denouement is a bit violent, tho’ I felt that one victim’s demise left the whole planet better off @ least on aesthetic grounds. (This book is quite concerned with body image!)
After I finished the book, I watched the film. It’s much simplified compared to the book. Mona’s whole family’s been compressed into one character. Natalie Press may be too attractive for Mona - but then Mona’s body self-image may be way off. I loved her dialect. Emily Blunt is a very controlled, & controlling Tamsin, whilst in the book Tamsin often seemed on the verge of melt-down. She’s an accomplished cellist as well, tho’ I’d have trouble imagining the original Tamsin having the discipline to master a musical instrument. Most significantly, in the film the relationship is very top-down with the upper-class Tamsin using & discarding Mona, whilst in the original their interaction is much more complex with the dominant partner switching back & forth. Things may work out tragically in the end, but if you go for high octane relationships, you could run a Formula 1 car on the one between these girls.
By what seems to be happy accident, all the grown ups are away & Tamsin & Mona have a month’s run of a large house. This kind of idyllic setting where friends &/or lovers have the run of a mansion (a college frat house or hall of residence over the holidays is suitable as well, I too vaguely remember) we encounter in The Secret History & The Likeness also; it’s an elysium where the young are free to live out their dreams and fantasies. Of course the idyll can never last, & it doesn’t for Tamsin & Mona. The denouement is a bit violent, tho’ I felt that one victim’s demise left the whole planet better off @ least on aesthetic grounds. (This book is quite concerned with body image!)
After I finished the book, I watched the film. It’s much simplified compared to the book. Mona’s whole family’s been compressed into one character. Natalie Press may be too attractive for Mona - but then Mona’s body self-image may be way off. I loved her dialect. Emily Blunt is a very controlled, & controlling Tamsin, whilst in the book Tamsin often seemed on the verge of melt-down. She’s an accomplished cellist as well, tho’ I’d have trouble imagining the original Tamsin having the discipline to master a musical instrument. Most significantly, in the film the relationship is very top-down with the upper-class Tamsin using & discarding Mona, whilst in the original their interaction is much more complex with the dominant partner switching back & forth. Things may work out tragically in the end, but if you go for high octane relationships, you could run a Formula 1 car on the one between these girls.
January 13, 2022
2,75☆
Ta powieść jest tak niebywałe dziwna, że nie potrafię w pełni odnaleźć się we własnych przemyśleniach.
Nienaturalność dialogów, ekscentryzm postaci i niecodzienny język - te trzy elementy są dla niej charakterystyczne.
Były momenty, w których zachwycała mnie błyskotliwością swoich metafor, które łączyły w sobie przyziemność z inteligencją. Ale były i takie, w których miałam ochotę wyrzucić ją przez okno poprzez jej odpychającą toksyczność.
Jestem na każdej możliwej granicy, w każdej możliwej skrajności w relacji z „Latem miłości”.
Jest w nim coś hipnotyzującego, coś, co wywołuje energetyczne napięcie między mną a tą książką. Jednak nagromadzenie niezdrowych wartości oraz krzywdzących przekonań nie pozwala mi ocenić jej na trzy gwiazdki.
Ta powieść jest tak niebywałe dziwna, że nie potrafię w pełni odnaleźć się we własnych przemyśleniach.
Nienaturalność dialogów, ekscentryzm postaci i niecodzienny język - te trzy elementy są dla niej charakterystyczne.
Były momenty, w których zachwycała mnie błyskotliwością swoich metafor, które łączyły w sobie przyziemność z inteligencją. Ale były i takie, w których miałam ochotę wyrzucić ją przez okno poprzez jej odpychającą toksyczność.
Jestem na każdej możliwej granicy, w każdej możliwej skrajności w relacji z „Latem miłości”.
Jest w nim coś hipnotyzującego, coś, co wywołuje energetyczne napięcie między mną a tą książką. Jednak nagromadzenie niezdrowych wartości oraz krzywdzących przekonań nie pozwala mi ocenić jej na trzy gwiazdki.
December 22, 2025
3.5 more accurate rating.
November 11, 2019
As someone who was a teenage girl drinker and a thief who met a sassy girl with beautiful breasts, and had a horrible time of it, this book helped me tremendously. It's easy to think it as off, or lacking; that it is shocking for the sake of it and not that relevant, but remember it is set in the 80's, before everyone had caught up with politics and feminism on social media. My Summer of Love is more relevant than ever because it gives us a raw, shocking, yet self-aware account of one type of female experience. Helen Cross is extremely good at first person voices, and excellent at adressing issues of class, identity, and power. One minute she's talking about galore for girls nighties and the night being blue as new jeans, the next she's sending a canonball of truth in your face. It's not often that a story looks at romance, sex and power dynamics linked to class and ability in a non glamourized same sex relationship between two female characters, especially in British literature. The characters are not likeable and this is what I loved about this book; it spills out terrible truths about a sexy yet terribly brutal and normal experience of girlhood, you need to read between the lines and catch the little gems of truth Mona spells out. She is a disempowered character recklessly spiralling out of control, but she is the one telling the story, never victimised, and maybe readers have a hard time with that. Sure she's often Tamsin's little toy, but even though Tamsin is higher than her class wise, she's still a 15 year old girl with issues. Mona's drunken, sharp analysis of how men and women behave around her is amazing. This is a non sugar-coated depiction of teenage selves and teenage female bodies. It also highlights the fact that being a woman can feel like such a curse to so many teenage girls, and that they can be misogynists and hate anything 'female' or weak and emotional as a result. Having the miners' strike, a missing girl investigation, the pub, and the Fakenham's house as a background works perfectly. I loved the film too since it was completely different from the book. Trippy, amazing photography, and amazing chemistry between the actresses, but the scene when they have a water fight in bikinis makes me cringe every time (male gaze anyone?). I loved the scene when Tamsin says Edith Piaf stabbed her lover with a fork (lie), kept the weird humour of the book... I have read this book over 15 times and might be biased, but also maybe I know what I am talking about. Not sure it bears much resemblance to Heavenly Creatures but I can see why people might think that because of the class commentary
February 3, 2015
I wouldn't recommend the story to almost anyone because it's so oddly dark that I don't know who could enjoy it, yet I found it constantly intriguing. The sinister lack of morals and out-of-touch-with-reality characters are much more horrifying than the film. The most similar story I can relate it to is Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures."
February 17, 2017
You could meet a crazy girl and truly believe her to be your saviour.
My Summer of Love is a bit of a bizarre read, a precursor to decadent novels of bored, awakening teenage girls like Dare Me and bares more than a few passing similarities to the real life crimes of Juliet Hulme (now crime novellist Anne Perry) and Pauline Parker. There's an almost surreal dissonance they exemplify: the obsessive, sexualized friendship between two girls, pushing the boundaries of every relationship, dispersing pseudo witticisms about men and sex in that under-experienced but over-aware teenage way, and the seemingly inevitable slide into violence and criminality.
Mona is a fifteen year old girl living above her father's pub with her stepbrother Porkchop in a small Yorkshire town. She's awkward, immature, ostensibly addicted to alcohol and fruit machine gambling, and vacillates between bold confidence and startling naivete. Though Mona is not particularly likeable, she's easy to fall into as even her internal monologue contains a strong Yorkshire dialect, allowing me to easily hear her voice in my head.
She meets Tamsin Fakenham a posh girl with a dead sister. She's beautiful, condescending, manipulative and controlling. Mona is instantly entranced by her and they become fast, if unsteady, friends. Together, they're explosive. In their absence, Tamsin's parents believe that she has gone to stay with an old aunt while she studies for her exam, but is instead living in a strange fantasy world with Mona where they are awake all night, starve themselves and have sex constantly. But their manic lifestyle is far from idyllic, their friendship unstable and volatile, each trying to gain the upper hand in an undending game of oneupmanship. Mona often comes up short.
Helen Cross's writing works wonderfully in developing atmosphere; you feel a sticky, cloying quality as you read, matching the heatwave that invades the setting. The entire novel takes place over a single month, so this works particularly well to generate the frenzied obsession the girls have with each other and their increasingly daring acts of criminality.
While Mona's chubby, sensitive stepbrother Porkchop is the only remotely likable character in the entire novel, it didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. It may even have enhanced it as the near-mania that overcomes Mona and Tamsin will inevitably end badly and I was at the edge of my seat waiting for it. Ultimately, My Summer of Love is a taut, if sometimes confusing, coming of age story teetering on the knife edge of thriller.
January 1, 2009
Helen Cross was a guest speaker at our library in September and following a reading from this, her début novel, I elected to check out a copy. It was a much rawer book than I expected though a compelling drama.
Set in the summer of 1984 the story is told in retrospect by Mona, who at the time of these events is 15-years old. Mona is a drinker, a thief and is addicted to fruit machines. Her father runs a pub in Whitehorse, Yorkshire and living with them is Mona's step-mother, Cleo, and step-brother, whom Mona calls Porkchop. A local girl has gone missing and there is talk of a murderer stalking the streets.
Aside from her tearaway activities, Mona looks after a pony belonging to the posh Fakenham family. One evening Mr. Fakenham approaches Mona and asks her if she will befriend his daughter, Tamsin who is home from boarding school and feeling lonely. Mona finds herself drawn to the sassy Tamsin. When Tamsin's father runs off with his 'sexretary', her actress mother decides to do some theatre at short notice to distract herself from his abandonment. Tamsin is expected to stay with her Aunt while her mother is away. However, Tamsin manages to fix things so that she and Mona can remain in the family house sleeping all day, dancing all night and avoiding all callers. Thus, the two girls experience their summer of love that eventually begins to spin alarmingly out of control to a quite shattering conclusion.
Even though it is disturbing in parts it is also quite blackly comedic as we see the world through Mona's eyes. I found that Mona's East Yorkshire accent and slang on the page was at times almost impenetrable though it gave the book an authentic air. Overall I am glad I read it.
January 27, 2011
Really, I wanted to give this 2.5 stars--I liked some of it, but was irritated by the rest. Mona's voice is really outstanding--her idiosyncrasies and trains of thought and memories make her a very real character. I enjoyed her narration, but once Tamsin enters the stage, the book starts to lag. Tamsin is basically a one-dimensionally bitchy rich girl. There's really nothing likable about her, except maybe "her beautiful breasts." Her entire family is false and obnoxious--nearly every scene with Tamsin just feels weighted with melodrama. Once Mona becomes entangled in Tamsin's bizarre world, their joined dialogue is totally artificial and ridiculous. The reader never truly understands why Tamsin acts the way she does, or why Mona so blindly obeys her commands. Mona's inimitable voice becomes lost and devoured by Tamsin's overwrought, substandard character. So paradoxically, the weaker character is able to destroy the stronger (and far more interesting) character--which ultimately makes the novel fail. I enjoyed the movie a great deal, however. The film succeeds where the novel does not, simply because the movie totally rewrites the book. I almost never think the movie is better than the book, but here, it's 100% true.
February 24, 2014
I was going to give this four stars but I've upped it to five because of the strong ending. It's about a young girl called Mona (real name Lisa) living with her dysfunctional family in Yorkshire in the early eighties. It's summer and the heat in this book is stifling. Truly you can feel the heat emanating from the pages. Reviewers have called this visceral and that's exactly what it is - a very impressive achievement. Mona ends up living with rich bitch Tasmin at her parents' mansion while everyone is away, and this leads to all manner of bad behaviour from the girls (drinking, screwing, and acts of the cruelest violence). The violence in this book is aimless but very realistic, and then right at the end we get two deaths that I certainly wasn't expecting, certainly not the second of these. If I have a criticism of this book it's that it possibly does sag a fraction in the middle, and my other complaint is that Mona and Tamsin don't talk like any teenagers I've ever heard. This aside, I was enormously impressed and I will look out for this author's other works.
March 6, 2011
I saw the movie first, which was truly great. It's different from the book. And better and I think that most people who love the movie, will hate the book. Well, I didn't hate it, because it was easy to read and at some points really funny, even though it's a bit dark sometimes. Cross found a good balance between shocking drama and humor. I didn't like Mona at all and I didn't understand her actions. I have more sympathy for Tamsin, however I would never befriend her in real life. She lies about the worst things but I have more understanding for her for some reason. I can't really explain why. It doesn't happen very often that I like the movie over the book, but with "My Summer of Love" that's just a fact.
October 4, 2023
I have no doubt this is a divisive book. It is morally complicated. Pretty much everyone in it is a terrible, terrible person. Everyone does awful things to everyone else and behaves horribly.
HOWEVER.
Personally I think it's the dark Yorkshire tale of deceit and fucked-up friendship that we deserve. It maps all the weirdness of northern class divisions, of tiny town small-mindedness and the danger of becoming enveloped by another person's ideologies, of sex and sexuality, of the differences between male and female violence, I could go on. It's brilliant.
It is written partly in Yorkshire accent and dialect: the phrases of my home county are all over the place and I LOVED this. More books outside of standard English please!!
I honestly think a lot of people would not enjoy this book because it is so specifically of a place and its culture, but for me the dry irony of Yorkshire and our absolute stubbornness was done perfectly.
I will say if you, like me, are obsessed with the film (masterpiece), it is completely different!
HOWEVER.
Personally I think it's the dark Yorkshire tale of deceit and fucked-up friendship that we deserve. It maps all the weirdness of northern class divisions, of tiny town small-mindedness and the danger of becoming enveloped by another person's ideologies, of sex and sexuality, of the differences between male and female violence, I could go on. It's brilliant.
It is written partly in Yorkshire accent and dialect: the phrases of my home county are all over the place and I LOVED this. More books outside of standard English please!!
I honestly think a lot of people would not enjoy this book because it is so specifically of a place and its culture, but for me the dry irony of Yorkshire and our absolute stubbornness was done perfectly.
I will say if you, like me, are obsessed with the film (masterpiece), it is completely different!
December 1, 2015
Delicious, heady stuff with exuberant writing. Good film too.
...later came across this in my 2002 notebook: set in 1984 during the miner's strike in Yorkshire, but not about that, rather 2 teenage girls, one posh, Tasmin Fakenham, one not, Mona. Lesbianism, murder, gas, weird food, servants. Heady, delicious stuff, read most of it in a hot bath, appropriate place.*
* I saw the author at an anthology launch and mentioned how I had read her book in the bath and how appropriate that was. She gave me the who-the-fuck-is-this-drunk look, and quickly moved away.
...later came across this in my 2002 notebook: set in 1984 during the miner's strike in Yorkshire, but not about that, rather 2 teenage girls, one posh, Tasmin Fakenham, one not, Mona. Lesbianism, murder, gas, weird food, servants. Heady, delicious stuff, read most of it in a hot bath, appropriate place.*
* I saw the author at an anthology launch and mentioned how I had read her book in the bath and how appropriate that was. She gave me the who-the-fuck-is-this-drunk look, and quickly moved away.
November 1, 2014
I wanted to read the book since I'd seen the film, but both are so different that it was hard to read it without a slight degree of cross-reference (mostly to do with the character of Porkchop, who seems seedier than the Paddy Considine version!) However, as a novel, it reads very well, and is more engaging than the film in many ways. An enjoyable read with enough references to take you back to an 80s summer...
September 1, 2016
Definitely one of my favorite books. I saw the movie before I read the book and I honestly enjoy both. I feel like I overdose on girls every time I read it. I love the twist in the story; I didn't see it coming.
Read
December 27, 2008در صورت تمایل، جهت مشخصات فیلمی که بر اساس این کتاب ساخته شده است؛ میتوانید از لینک زیر استفاده بفرمایید
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382189
January 8, 2013
well never has a book made me feel so ridiculously empty
thanks helen cross
good job though
thanks helen cross
good job though
August 10, 2018
‘’Something within me sighed in relief and slotted into place like a bridge completes’’
'My Summer of Love' by Helen Cross was nothing like I expected. This was a library find and knowing that there was a lesbian movie with the same title, I borrowed it. Only, I had no idea what the movie was about and the book blurb didn't offer many hints as to what was to come.
The plot follows Mona and Tamsin. Mona's family own a pub, where she works but she also volunteers at the Fakenham's estate to look after a horse; which is where she meets Tamsin again. Tamsin is back from boarding school and up to no good. This is perfect for Mona, who is interested in crime and gambling her money. Throughout the book, there are many hints that something will happen that summer and indeed, what happens was shocking.
‘’from the first real moment of our meeting I was already a criminal and she was distinctly witchy’’
Tamsin and Mona do get together. They love booze, dressing up and drama – lots of drama. What struck me was that what they loved about each other the most was probably the drama. They are inherently toxic for each other, and they know it. Tamsin has a superiority complex. She’s critical and cynical. Mona just wants to leave her family and is very jealous and spiteful. Both are alcoholics. Family relationships are an important aspect of the plot. The plot gets ticker when they live in Tamsin’s house alone for the summer.
While the plot was not what I expected, the writing was great. Some things were executed really well such as the chapters which were all named after a drink or food which was then mentioned in the chapter. If we had to keep in mind the time and place that this book fictionally took place in, the ideas about society and women and the nuclear war (cold war), the ideas presented feel very real. This does not mean that I want to read on how the protagonist thinks that ‘’with a tan and a pair of heavy breasts you need not worry about independence.’’ I am using more quotes than my usual reviews so that you, as potential readers, know what you are signing up for.
The ending was very disturbing, which is why I think this book belongs to the ‘horror’ section. The kind of horrors that are more disturbing because they could happen. This is not a Bury-your-gays book, but the ‘villains’ are queer. I kept hoping for the best and for a while, I thought it would happen but no, it didn’t. Mona and Tamsin liked to power-trip each other and scare each other on the regular.
My thoughts on this book are mixed. On the one hand it was executed half-well. There are still some sub-plots which I feel were left open and not like the main open-end but just left hanging. There was constant mention of one girl that went missing. It’s not explicit what happened to her and I felt like it was a wasted opportunity. Had I known what the book was about, I would have been ready for it, but as it was – I wasn’t. Some words left me perplexed. It took me many chapters to realize that ‘mesen’ meant ‘myself’.
The book offers a lot of introspection and is very depressing. This book has a whole list of trigger warnings. There is a lot of family issues, a lot of body image issues - this book could be very triggering. There's a lot of body shaming as well and some animal neglect and child neglect. There’s also murder and suicide. There’s a lot of harmful bodily stuff, things that would make medical professionals cringe. There's a lot of sexism, coming from everywhere, including the protagonists. It does offer a lot of thoughts on women. I particularly liked the message on the bodily fluids. I don’t think it’s something that a lot of writers touch upon and it’s something many people live every day.
In conclusion, while this book is Sapphic, unless you are in the mood for a dark read – don’t read it. Just when I thought there was hope for Mona...there wasn’t. This is the ultimate example of what peer pressure and being caged and wanting attention and having darkness that is not addressed in a healthy was could lead to. It’s pretty disturbing and I was also not sure if the two protagonists actually loved each other or whether it was a matter of two dark souls meeting and corrupting each other further.
'My Summer of Love' by Helen Cross was nothing like I expected. This was a library find and knowing that there was a lesbian movie with the same title, I borrowed it. Only, I had no idea what the movie was about and the book blurb didn't offer many hints as to what was to come.
The plot follows Mona and Tamsin. Mona's family own a pub, where she works but she also volunteers at the Fakenham's estate to look after a horse; which is where she meets Tamsin again. Tamsin is back from boarding school and up to no good. This is perfect for Mona, who is interested in crime and gambling her money. Throughout the book, there are many hints that something will happen that summer and indeed, what happens was shocking.
‘’from the first real moment of our meeting I was already a criminal and she was distinctly witchy’’
Tamsin and Mona do get together. They love booze, dressing up and drama – lots of drama. What struck me was that what they loved about each other the most was probably the drama. They are inherently toxic for each other, and they know it. Tamsin has a superiority complex. She’s critical and cynical. Mona just wants to leave her family and is very jealous and spiteful. Both are alcoholics. Family relationships are an important aspect of the plot. The plot gets ticker when they live in Tamsin’s house alone for the summer.
While the plot was not what I expected, the writing was great. Some things were executed really well such as the chapters which were all named after a drink or food which was then mentioned in the chapter. If we had to keep in mind the time and place that this book fictionally took place in, the ideas about society and women and the nuclear war (cold war), the ideas presented feel very real. This does not mean that I want to read on how the protagonist thinks that ‘’with a tan and a pair of heavy breasts you need not worry about independence.’’ I am using more quotes than my usual reviews so that you, as potential readers, know what you are signing up for.
The ending was very disturbing, which is why I think this book belongs to the ‘horror’ section. The kind of horrors that are more disturbing because they could happen. This is not a Bury-your-gays book, but the ‘villains’ are queer. I kept hoping for the best and for a while, I thought it would happen but no, it didn’t. Mona and Tamsin liked to power-trip each other and scare each other on the regular.
My thoughts on this book are mixed. On the one hand it was executed half-well. There are still some sub-plots which I feel were left open and not like the main open-end but just left hanging. There was constant mention of one girl that went missing. It’s not explicit what happened to her and I felt like it was a wasted opportunity. Had I known what the book was about, I would have been ready for it, but as it was – I wasn’t. Some words left me perplexed. It took me many chapters to realize that ‘mesen’ meant ‘myself’.
The book offers a lot of introspection and is very depressing. This book has a whole list of trigger warnings. There is a lot of family issues, a lot of body image issues - this book could be very triggering. There's a lot of body shaming as well and some animal neglect and child neglect. There’s also murder and suicide. There’s a lot of harmful bodily stuff, things that would make medical professionals cringe. There's a lot of sexism, coming from everywhere, including the protagonists. It does offer a lot of thoughts on women. I particularly liked the message on the bodily fluids. I don’t think it’s something that a lot of writers touch upon and it’s something many people live every day.
In conclusion, while this book is Sapphic, unless you are in the mood for a dark read – don’t read it. Just when I thought there was hope for Mona...there wasn’t. This is the ultimate example of what peer pressure and being caged and wanting attention and having darkness that is not addressed in a healthy was could lead to. It’s pretty disturbing and I was also not sure if the two protagonists actually loved each other or whether it was a matter of two dark souls meeting and corrupting each other further.
May 20, 2025
Some of the writing feels mystic and based more on vivid feelings than what’s actually happening. It’s slow at first as you try and pick up on the new language the author is writing. It picks up, especially around the chapters where Mona’s vitriol dissipates into insecurities and realizations of womanhood.
I first watched the movie 4 years ago and was obsessed with it, then rewatched with an ex and hated it, then had the book for a while before I ever touched it. The food related chapter names, the callous observations she has about others and herself, this weird relationship she’s perceiving as her salvation from a boring place. I think it spoke to me about things I push deep down, especially as a teenage girl. There’s plenty of parts of the book that are a bit much, or drone by slowly. I think the reveal near the end of the book with Tam’s family does a great job at giving the reader the same ice bath feeling of losing delusion. The mystique of the past month’s events and around Tamsin just completely flops away, and the whole thing just feels embarrassing. You never get mystique back in life with a lot of things, and I really liked feeling that within a book.
I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to recommend this book, it’s really not all that, but it feels like something you have to stumble upon and have a weird internal echo chamber experience with (for lack of better term).
I first watched the movie 4 years ago and was obsessed with it, then rewatched with an ex and hated it, then had the book for a while before I ever touched it. The food related chapter names, the callous observations she has about others and herself, this weird relationship she’s perceiving as her salvation from a boring place. I think it spoke to me about things I push deep down, especially as a teenage girl. There’s plenty of parts of the book that are a bit much, or drone by slowly. I think the reveal near the end of the book with Tam’s family does a great job at giving the reader the same ice bath feeling of losing delusion. The mystique of the past month’s events and around Tamsin just completely flops away, and the whole thing just feels embarrassing. You never get mystique back in life with a lot of things, and I really liked feeling that within a book.
I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to recommend this book, it’s really not all that, but it feels like something you have to stumble upon and have a weird internal echo chamber experience with (for lack of better term).
October 13, 2019
This author has written one of my favourite books of all time, as well as one of my least favourite. So I was curious as to which this would most closely resemble. It ended up being somewhere in the middle - her ability to nail anything with sparkling prose is used here to good effect. She reaches heights other authors can only dream of. It’s worth reading just for that. On the other hand I found the storyline melodramatic and difficult to follow. Funnily enough, like narrator Mona I was also 15 in 1984 and growing up in Yorkshire. I can’t remember any of my peers engaging in the sort of repartee found here - and the ones who skipped school, smoked and drank, and were experienced enough to refer to “thumb-twiddlingly bad sex” would have been the least likely of all (though I unreservedly loved that phrase!). What did feel reasonably genuine was the tendency of Mona and her friend Tamsin to talk across each other, neither particularly interested in what the other was saying. As a depiction of the self-absorption of teenagers it was pretty realistic, but as a story it left me cold.
October 12, 2021
Molto dolce e al contempo duro come un pugno nello stomaco.
Contro spoiler:
Se avete visto il film, leggete comunque il libro poiché, a prescindere che è un film molto bello, a me è piaciuto tanto, ma, e lo sottolineo : CON IL LIBRO HA DAVVERO POCO E NULLA IN COMUNE.
La trama, tolti i nomi e neanche tutti, e qualche ambientazione, non risponde ne al carattere né alla fisionomia delle due splendide protagoniste. Poiché splendide lo son davvero,
nella storia del film non potevano scegliere attrici migliori; la ben famosa seppur ancora quasi agli esordì, Emily Blunt e la meno nota ma stupenda Natalie Press (bellissima). Una vera meraviglia.
Ma ripeto, purtoppo ne la fisicità ne le storie, rispondono alla trama del libro.
E forse va bene così.
Si possono avere a disposizione due bei prodotti, Un ottimo libro molto ben scritto e un bel film senza che l'uno rovini il piacere di leggere/guardare l'altro.
Li consiglio entrambi
4,5/5
C.C.
Contro spoiler:
Se avete visto il film, leggete comunque il libro poiché, a prescindere che è un film molto bello, a me è piaciuto tanto, ma, e lo sottolineo : CON IL LIBRO HA DAVVERO POCO E NULLA IN COMUNE.
La trama, tolti i nomi e neanche tutti, e qualche ambientazione, non risponde ne al carattere né alla fisionomia delle due splendide protagoniste. Poiché splendide lo son davvero,
nella storia del film non potevano scegliere attrici migliori; la ben famosa seppur ancora quasi agli esordì, Emily Blunt e la meno nota ma stupenda Natalie Press (bellissima). Una vera meraviglia.
Ma ripeto, purtoppo ne la fisicità ne le storie, rispondono alla trama del libro.
E forse va bene così.
Si possono avere a disposizione due bei prodotti, Un ottimo libro molto ben scritto e un bel film senza che l'uno rovini il piacere di leggere/guardare l'altro.
Li consiglio entrambi
4,5/5
C.C.
August 12, 2022
it's hard to find the words to describe this book. its a specific iota of teenage girlhood that it captures so well at times and fails at others.
its actually crazy how much is changed from the book to the film, to the point where it may as well not be the same. i like book mona a lot more. but in the film her whole family is stripped out apart from her brother in law? crazy choice. i think mona attempting to kill tamsin is a better choice compared to them heavenly creaturing porkchop. man porkchop was easily the nicest most sympathetic character in the whole book, poor kid. also where was the lesbian sex the film thrived w lesbian sex.
its actually crazy how much is changed from the book to the film, to the point where it may as well not be the same. i like book mona a lot more. but in the film her whole family is stripped out apart from her brother in law? crazy choice. i think mona attempting to kill tamsin is a better choice compared to them heavenly creaturing porkchop. man porkchop was easily the nicest most sympathetic character in the whole book, poor kid. also where was the lesbian sex the film thrived w lesbian sex.
April 14, 2020
Although I'd seen the film nothing prepared me for how much darker the book is ... a real plus for me as I always enjoy complex, dark psychological stories but maybe a turn-off ro anyone who loved the film! I loved the author's use of slang and dialect to evocatively capture Mona's voice, her use of some very black humour and was impressed by the ways in which she took the story in a much darker direction than I'd been expecting. A truly memorable novel, one which will remain vivid in my mind.
January 24, 2024
A story about class set in Yorkshire concerning a love affair between two girls? On paper, this is a DREAM book for me. Unfortunately, I really didn't enjoy it. The lack of accountability throughout seemed really unrealistic - and the final murder seemed utterly implausible. While I get that the book was being true to the body obsessions of teenage girls, I struggled with the relentless fatphobia & dehumanisation of the step-brother. For me, this was a rare example of the film being an improvement on the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2024
Not really sure what to make of this book. Are teenage girls really like this? Or just the mad ones. Either way, they're not normal, which makes me wonder about the author. Which makes me wonder about myself and the twee tales I write about death, murder and other sundries.
This isn't a book I would recommend anyone to read. There's no moral core to it. There's nothing that says 'these people are bonkers but here's a life lesson you can learn from their madness'. It's just there without judgement. Then again, I suppose we shouldn't judge.
This isn't a book I would recommend anyone to read. There's no moral core to it. There's nothing that says 'these people are bonkers but here's a life lesson you can learn from their madness'. It's just there without judgement. Then again, I suppose we shouldn't judge.
December 3, 2023
I first saw the movie, then read the book. Both are great (actually two really different stories), but the book is even more fun!
Out of print, no e-book. But there are scans at The Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mysummero...
I have made an EPUB in case anyone wants to read
Out of print, no e-book. But there are scans at The Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mysummero...
I have made an EPUB in case anyone wants to read
January 24, 2021
This is one of those books where the film is possibly better yet different enough that you can't quite decide. This is the second time I've read this and I liked it differently the second time. It is dark. And curious.
Read
August 18, 2024One of the most intense books I’ve ever read. It feels so suffocating to read and you feel like you’re trapped in the narrative with the girls. I think the writing is incredible but huge TW for ED behaviour. Genuinely amazing but I never want to read it again and I’m glad it’s over.
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