Hello fellow readers! And just like that, Summerween 2025 is over. I’m a little late posting this wrap-up but I finally have my thoughts about the books I read and want to share them with you. Check out my thoughts below and let me know what you have read so far this summer.

Bad Tourists by Caro Carver – Centering on three best friends who travel to the Maldives to celebrate one of the ladies getting a divorce, this beachy retreat soon becomes a living nightmare when dark secrets are revealed and someone ends up murdered. If you’ve been following my blog for a while now, you might recall my Spring TBR 2025 Wrap-Up in which I talked about another beachy thriller, She Started It, in which a group of friends go to a remote island for a bachelorette party. If you have read that one, then you don’t need to pick up Bad Tourists. The plots are very similar and honestly there wasn’t much here worth mentioning. It wasn’t a bad book by any stretch of the imagination but it also did nothing overly impressive.

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager – Now let’s talk about a book that was my standout from the readathon. Last year during Summerween I read my first Riley Sager book, The Only One Left, and gave it a solid 3.5 stars. However, Home Before Dark is a superb five star read. Everything about this book was superbly done but the standout was the atmosphere.

From the first page, the creepiness and the mystery of Baneberry Hall sets in, pulling you deeper into the story. Honestly, if I had not started this book on the Fourth of July, I would have finished it in one day. There was never a point where I wanted to take a break, I just wanted to keep going and figure out if Baneberry Hall was haunted or not. Unlike The Only One Left‘s main protagonist, who made quite a few questionable decisions that I found to be unbelievable, the main character of Maggie doesn’t. That is not to say she doesn’t make bad decisions but they are believable and moved the plot along in a good way. I could not recommend this book enough for either Summerween or the actual Halloween season. You’ll get through it quickly and hopefully love it just as much as I did.

Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente – Let’s move on to the weird and puzzling. Earlier this year I read Bunny by Mona Awad and noted in both my review and Spring 2025 TBR wrap-up that I wasn’t going to score this book because it was such a weird story that I didn’t feel I could accurately rate it.

The exact same thing can be said about Comfort Me with Apples. 

This novella, barely a hundred pages long, is a retelling of a Biblical story (I won’t say which one in case you want to read it though it sort of is obvious after reading a few pages) and in the last twenty pages, Ms. Valente cranks the weird factor from one to a thousand. The novella also has an ambiguous ending, in my opinion, and I was left more confused than satisfied. That being said, I don’t think I was the target audience for this so if you enjoy something a bit odder this one would be worth picking up.

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark – The final book I actually finished during the readathon was this new release by Julie Clark. Centering on a ghostwriter, Olivia, the story follows Olivia writing a horror author’s memoirs. But, not only is the author Olivia’s father, Vincent Taylor, who she has an ice cold relationship with, but the memoirs are focusing on one particular event in Vincent’s life that has followed him throughout his career; the murders of his brother, Danny, and sister, Poppy, who the public believes were killed by Vincent himself. As Olivia tries to uncover the mystery, secrets are revealed and Olivia finds herself asking more questions.

Truthfully, I was very conflicted about this book after I finished it. On the one hand I loved the premise and the idea that we are following a ghostwriter who is trying to put together the pieces of a messy puzzle. And yet, there were parts of the book that left me unfulfilled, particularly the ending. I won’t reveal it but the twist was okay. If you have read a lot of thriller/mystery books you might be able to guess it and that’s why I am conflicted. Ultimately, I settled on 3.5 stars out of 5. As I mentioned, the premise was the part of the story I liked the most but between the ending and the development of the characters (not a huge fan of Olivia, sorry) I didn’t feel like it lived up to the current hype it is receiving.