Compelling if slightly odd, Summerhouse is sun drenched melodrama at its best.

Have you ever eaten candy from another country? A sweet whose ingredients and even flavor are a complete mystery to you because the color is nondescript and the writing on the wrapper appears to be from the Sino-Tibetan Language Family? Yet when you pop it in your mouth you enjoy it enough to keep eating?

Reading Summerhouse was precisely like that experience.

Initially I was expecting some kind of dark, gay, beach read, something atmospheric and nuanced but ultimately not too dense. Then after getting further in I expected something Hitchcockian, layered with buried secrets and ironically futile machinations, shimmering with wit. But about halfway through my expectations changed yet again and I was getting dollops of telenovela and Shakespeare, all tearful confrontations and improbable circumstances with over the top dramatic flair and a deep core of earnestness.

In the end Summerhouse was all of these and none of them.

For the life of me I cannot reckon the repeated Virginia Woolf references (at least 3 by my count) but I was definitely invested and looked forward to seeing where the story would go. The writing felt a little stilted at times but that’s a perennial quirk of translated works and doesn’t carry much weight as a critique.

The basic premise is that Fehmi and Şener, a committed though outwardly closeted couple, live on an idyllic island near Istanbul. The serenity of their house and the orderliness of their golden years are disrupted when a devastatingly handsome new neighbor catches Fehmi’s eye. Over the course of one summer their lives will be upended in ways they could never imagine.

This book was immediately gripping for me. I cared about the fates of these characters and wanted to see what would happen to them. That being said, the plot was a little slow until the arrival of the new neighbors kicked things off. It was necessary for giving the reader context, but still, potential readers should be aware. As I'd already mentioned, the tone was a bit hard to parse. I felt distinctly off balance basically the entire time I was reading. Some bewilderment isn’t necessarily unwelcome in a thriller, however, and after a certain point in the story (you’ll know it when you read it!) my desire for answers became all consuming. The author has a keen sense for imagining the most stressful, dramatic thing possible in any given situation and then taking us there. The ending of this novel was as ambivalent as its tone. It’s the kind of book you foist on your best friend and lock them in a room with until they finish because if you’re anything like me, you’ll NEED someone to talk to about it.

Summerhouse was a bit of an odd duck as books go, but one I enjoyed spending time with. I would give it three and a half stars if such a rating were supported on this platform.