Twenty Boy Summer By Sarah Ockler

According to Anna's best friend, Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy every day, there's a pretty good chance Anna will find her first summer romance. Anna lightheartedly agrees to the game, but there's something she hasn't told Frankie - she's already had her romance, and it was with Frankie's older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death one year ago.
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Beautifully written and emotionally honest, this is a debut novel that explores what it truly means to love someone, what it means to grieve, and ultimately, how to make the most of every single moment this world has to offer.
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This is a beautiful and heartbreaking debut novel and has now become one of my favourite summer reads.
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Ockler manages to capture summertime brilliantly and takes you right back to those long lazy days of sun, sea and sand that I am already starting to miss with the oncoming months of Autumn. The writing is stunning and lyrical and there are so many emotions in this book that it almost leaves you breathless.
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Anna was an amazing character. You really felt for her, having to keep such a big secret to herself for so long. A secret that seems to encompass her whole life. You actually feel like you are grieving along with her. That grief never really goes away but when a new acquaintance arrives on the scene, Anna begins to have hope and faith in herself again and a sense of fun starts to seep back into her life.
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Frankie is also drowning in grief and copes with this by hiding behind a new flirty and spontaneous personality. She adopts a carefree attitude towards life where her only goal is boys. However, she finally realises she hasn't buried her true feelings deep enough and is finally able to talk to her best friend and parents.
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Matt's presence is also infused throughout the story. There are some really sweet flashbacks to Anna's fifteenth birthday party where they finally reveal their feelings for one another with a kiss. I love how Ockler portrays the excitement and nervousness of their first teenage romance, yet they still have this relaxing comfort around each other as if it was inevitable that it would happen.
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This book is all about discovering life goes on and its okay to let the guilt and grief go. It doesn't mean you will forget the people you love. It was an emotional rollercoaster and much deeper than the title suggests.
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Random Passage: Ice-cream cones in hand, we walk around the back of the stand along the pier where we waited for our table at Breeze. As I lick a runaway line of melted cherry chocolate ripple from my hand, I am hyperaware of my surroundings. The back-and-forth ancient lull of the tide. The cry of the seagulls passing overhead. The smell of salt and fish carried on the warm breeze. With each step along the old wooden planks of the pier, tiny grains of sand that hitchhiked from the beach below are pulverized under our heels. Sand that travelled millions of miles over billions of years across shifting continents and churning oceans, surviving plate tectonics, erosion, and sedimentary deposition is crushed by our new sandals. The cosmos can be so cruel.