SUMMER SONS by Lee Mandelo – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
Published by Tordotcom on September 28 2021
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 384
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Despite a couple of intriguing mysteries and an atmospheric setting, Summer Sons ended up being a disappointing read.

The description and early blurbs for Summer Sons promised a queer, spooky, Southern Gothic ghost story, and the creepy cover made it even more appealing to me. And while it’s unabashedly queer and creepy and atmospheric at times, unfortunately it just didn’t work for me. 

Andrew was supposed to join his best friend Eddie in Nashville to attend Vanderbilt University, but before he can make the move, Eddie is found dead of an apparent suicide. Andrew arrives at the house Eddie was living in—the house they were going to share—only to discover that a student named Riley is already living there. Heartbroken and overwhelmed by Eddie’s death, and the fact that Eddie left Andrew his seven million dollar inheritance, Andrew is convinced that Eddie would never take his own life, and that there must be another explanation.

With the help of Riley and his cousin Sam, Andrew begins to dig into Eddie’s last moments, hoping to learn the truth. But when an angry spirit who appears to be Eddie starts haunting him, his investigation takes a terrifying turn. 

Where to start. I’m afraid this is going to be a mostly negative review, which I know is unusual for me. The story has so much potential to be great, but it falls short in many ways. I loved the idea of a malevolent ghost, and the author really nails the feeling of danger every time Andrew is haunted by Eddie’s spirit. Despite their relationship when Eddie was alive, Eddie’s ghost seems angry and even ends up physically hurting Andrew. There’s a feeling of claustrophobia during these scenes that really creeped me out. However, for a book pitched as a ghost story, there really isn’t that much page time with Eddie the spirit, and I would have loved more.

One of the ongoing mysteries involves a traumatic event that happened to Eddie and Andrew when they were kids. Mandelo refers to this event in brief, tantalizing spurts, but doesn’t reveal what actually happened to the boys until the end, and even then his explanation was rather vague and unsatisfying. The result of this event leaves both boys with the ability to sense and see ghosts, and I thought that was such an intriguing idea. But like many of the better elements in this story, it just wasn’t utilized enough.

I had hoped for more of the “dark academia” trope too, and sadly that element fell flat as well. Andrew is expected to take up Eddie’s unfinished research into local Southern folklore, and when he arrives he’s expected to show up to classes, do the work, and have regular sessions with Eddie’s faculty mentor, Dr. Troth. While there was an interesting mystery involving Eddie’s missing journal and research notes, Andrew is much more focused on finding these items—as well as Eddie’s missing cell phone—than actually going to class. He blows off his advisor meetings and classes, and really, who can blame him? He’s trying to figure out who murdered his best friend!

Unfortunately, the story has many elements that didn’t really interest me, and less of these and more of the ghost would have made it better in my opinion. What are these elements? Street racing, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol, lots of sexual tension (and I do mean LOTS), gender identity and sexual orientation issues and plenty of angst. Most of the characters are male, so the testosterone is off the charts. A couple of female characters round out the cast but they don’t do much: a token girlfriend, Andrew’s ex who’s pissed off at him about something (and is only in the story, as far as I can tell, to help Andrew figure out his sexuality), and the evil professor Dr. Troth. I didn’t understand why the street racing element was even needed. I feel like it was added to make the characters seem “bad,” along with all the drinking, drugs and sex.

All of these negatives would have been ok if the pacing and writing had been better, but here’s where the story really fell apart for me. Summer Sons is slow. And I mean it develops at a snail’s pace. The fact that it took me three weeks to finish also tells you something. I found I was forcing myself to read it, and I almost DNF’d it several times but in the end decided to push through. There are bursts of excitement and danger scattered throughout, but in between those moments are excruciatingly slow and repetitious sections that killed all those thrilling scenes.

And I’m sorry to say that Lee Mandelo’s writing did not work for me at all. The story is overwritten and flowery and frankly, confusing as hell. Many times I got hung up on sentences that didn’t make any sense and pulled me out of the story. Now I know I read an uncorrected proof, and it’s entirely possible some of these have been edited by now, but I doubt that’s the case. Here are a couple of cringe-worthy examples: 

Their delicate dance of implication and tradition remained alien to him, and it pulled the air out of the room.

and

The question flew into the wall of Andrew’s privacy like a bird into glass and dropped dead.

I haven’t even touched on the characters, and to be honest, I’m sort of ready to end this review. Let’s just say that I didn’t like any of them, even Andrew. I did appreciate what Mandelo was trying to do with gender and sexual identity, but it became the focus of the story, and that just wasn’t the story I wanted to read. Many readers seem to love Summer Sons, so I suppose I might be the odd man out, but ultimately this wasn’t the right book for me.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.