Thanks to Macmillan Audio for the copy of this ALC!

Rachel and her friends are having the summer of their lives: they're teenagers, they're living in Greece, and they're bartending and partying the summer away. Rachel also meets Alistair and falls desperately in love with him, but everything falls apart when one of the girls ends up dead.

In a #MeToo-movement storyline, Katie Bishop delves into the dark secrets and obsessiveness, blurred lines, power and manipulation that can happen between teenage girls and older men. I wouldn't really call this book a thriller, but more contemporary fiction with a bit of a dark and mysterious element. I enjoyed this read on audio (Annabel Scholey is a fantastic narrator), but would suggest avoiding if you have any triggers relating to #MeToo,

16 year old Rachel is a teenager when she and her friend go back packing to a Greek Island. In her travels she meets handsome and older Alastair. Alastair is charismatic and entrances her and she finds herself developing feelings for him that will end up shaping her and changing her through the rest of her life.

We then find ourselves about 18 or so years later and Rachel is married to Tom, although she's never stopped thinking about Alastair and when she finds an opportunity which she is able to get in touch with him she makes a decision in which to do so.

This book is told in a dual time frame manner, both from the perspective of Rachel's teenage years and during the current time frame. You will find that this book will take you back to a time where you will find yourself remembering yourself as a teenager. The mistakes you made, your lack of confidence and ability to make good decisions, how naive you were an awkward you felt in situations. The author did an excellent job and bringing you back to that point in your life so that you were there with the lead character feeling the way she had felt during that time in her life. I found myself in her place and feeling sorry for her and empathizing for what she was going through.

Katie Bishop, the author, did a great job with character development and creating a plot that was not only character driven but driven by the location and the past and the presents. I've been to Greece many times, I'm half creek, and she's done an excellent job with the description of what a Greek island feels like, it makes me miss being there.

An excellent debut novel. Well done.

The Girls of Summer is a story that I won't soon forget. At seventeen, Rachel traveled to Greece with her best friend and fell for an older man named Alister that she believed loved her back. Many terrible things happened to her during her stay. When she returns with her husband, Tom, on a vacation. Those memories resurface and what she believed, she finds out was not true at all. I was sad for Rachel. She was emotionally and physical abused. I can't even begin to imagine it. I do feel the author wrote an exceptional story and handled the subject matter with care.

Trigger warning: Sexual abuse, drugs and suicide.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for my gifted ALC in exchange for my honest review.