Summer of Secrets by Richie Tankersley Cusick

 

There aren't a lot of authors where I read their books and am like, "I NEED to be friends with this person," but I feel that way about Richie Tankersley Cusick. She just gets me. Her favorite tropes are my favorite tropes. She knows how to write a horror novel that still serves up on the romance. And that is just so... rare. It honestly kills me that I didn't read more of her books as a kid. I think she would have been right up there for me alongside L.J. Smith and Caroline B. Cooney. #HorrorQueen Also, PLEASE BE MY FRIEND. I'M COOL. <3

SUMMER OF SECRETS is one of the few books in RTC's backlist that hasn't made it to ebook. So I actually tracked down and bought a paperback because I want to read all her books. It's one of the middling ones, not the worst, not the best. Two girls, Stephanie and Gayle, go out to the country to visit Gayle's elderly Aunt Pat. When they get there, though, they get reamed by a truck with its lights off. And then they wander offroad and discover A SEVERED ARM IN A TRASH BAG.

I'm sorry?

This is before even fifty pages have gone by and really sets the tone for when they arrive to Aunt Pat's house and the doors are unlocked and there's no one there. Thinks go bonkers pretty quickly from there: the killer tries to kill someone via food poisoning (LOL), one of the girls literally FALLS ON A KNIFE, and then there's a canoodling session in a haystack that's put to a premature end by pitchforkus interruptus. (Which I was really happy about, because the cover MADE ME PROMISES OKAY.) No joke, I might have deducted a star out of spite if the scene on the cover didn't happen, because that old skool clinch cover, YA style, was, like, 80% of the reason why I bought this book.

There were some things I really loved about SUMMER OF SECRETS. The friendship between the girls, not one not two but THREE hot guys, some surprisingly steamy descriptions of bare chests ('90s YA Thirst Traps have entered the chat), and some pretty creepy scenes and setting of the atmosphere. I'm deducting points because the heroines were SO DUMB. One of them literally fell on a knife. The other was like, okay, I know you might have tried to kill my friend and maybe also me, and I know you keep gaslighting me, but I'm going to lie to the authorities for you TWICE because you're hot uwu.

Honestly, this just made me nostalgic for SILENT STALKER, which was this but better. I'm not mad, though, and because it's by RTC and has the best YA horror cover ever, I'm keeping this one.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars