Review: "The Summer Remains" (The Summer Remains #1) by Seth King

The Summer Remains by Seth King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Summary from GoodReads

Twenty-four-year-old Summer Johnson knows two things. The first is that due to a quickly worsening medical condition, she faces a risky surgery in three months’ time that may or may not end in her death. The second is that she would like to fall in love before then.

As spring sinks into her namesake season on the Florida coastline, Summer plays the odds and downloads a new dating app - and after one intriguing message from a beautiful surfer named Cooper Nichols, it becomes clear that the story of what may be her last few months under the sun is about to be completely revised. All she has to do now is write something worth reading.

Tender, honest, devastating and triumphant, The Summer Remains explores a very human battle being waged in a very digital age: the search for a love that will outlast this temporary borrowing of bones. In an era when many feel compelled to share and re-share anything about everything, prepare to feel a love so special, you will want to hug it close and make it yours forever.

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REVIEW

This book was a hard one not only to read but to finish too. If Colleen Hoover makes your heart swell and your emotions explode, then Seth King tears out your heart and creates fireworks with it. (while you are still sobbing in the corner).

Summer's story is a hard one. Diagnosed since birth with a fatal desease, which is NOT the 'c' word, she has to spend her life into hospitals with an overprotecting mother, her small brother and a father who has left them all behind. When she learns that there is a small chance for her to have a surgery which can save her life, she takes it.

And then begins the summer.
That's when Summer meets Cooper.

I could write a post long enough to read for a week about what I read and what happened in the end. But it would be a huge spoiler and I wil also start crying, which by the way I'm doing right now as a type this review.

Summer has no motions of the dangers she is facing. Yet, she doesn't cower in the confines of her life. She wants to LIVE, LOVE and nothing can stop her from doing just that. Even if it means breaking the heart of her love in the case something happens to her.

And Cooper. Sweet, funny, sarcastic, broken Cooper. He is the material of love and sacrifice, of sadness and hope and I felt so close to him, knowing that he would too carry a burden along the way.

Each turning page was a hardship, and as a person who has lived a similar situation with a family member I could relate. There were moments in which I wondered if the choices both made were right or how lucky they were to meet AFTER downloading a dating app. Well you know that this is not always safe, but in the fiction world anything can happen.

Yet this book was not entirely fiction. I could see Seth peeking through the pages showing his own emotions and raw honesty, but with a single thread of hope holding everything in place, "The Summer Remains" was the strongest, most emotional book I've ever read.

Life-altering and heart crashing this book is truly worth reading.