After graduating college, five friends make a pact. Every summer, they’ll meet for one week at the same beach house on the California coast to relive the golden days of college. There’s just one no dating within the group.
Simple enough, except Everett and Sutton already broke the rule before summer even began… and couldn’t seem to stop. What started as a one-time fling turned into an annual habit neither of them could quit, until the night everything fell apart.
Five years later, Sutton has no interest in seeing Everett ever again. Until one of their friends, newly divorced and looking for an escape, calls everyone back to the beach house. She expects awkward silences and forced smiles, but nothing could prepare her for Everett--still infuriating, still magnetic, and still capable of unraveling her with a single glance.
As the week stretches on and every re-lived tradition, shared meal and outing bring a flood of sun-soaked memories that feed the spark between her and Everett, Sutton begins to wonder if the promise that broke them apart was worth keeping in the first place… and if breaking it again will ruin the delicate balance their friend group has finally started to reclaim.
Title: Summer People
Author: Sally Blakely
Publisher: MIRA
Expected Publication Date: July 7, 2026
Review:
Thank you to Edelweiss and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I really enjoyed Blakely's debut title. I was excited when I saw she had another book coming out. And the blurb just caught my eye and made me really want to read it. I was so hopeful this would hit as the first one did but it did not. And, while I enjoyed it enough, it actually felt like a totally different author wrote it.
I love the idea of a romance that spans years. The push and pull of such a thing, like When Harry Met Sally. It's so easy to make it work. But this one just felt kind of meh for me. The FMC, Sutton Hale, tells us the story as she and her friends meet every Summer after graduation to celebrate their friendship, and the pact they made to never get involved with each other. But Sutton and their friend Everett hold a secret. They met during their last year of college and had a one night stand. Once the pact is in place, neither feels they can every say anything to their friends for fear of disrupting a good thing. But all those feelings build and build until one day they come to a head.
I enjoyed the dual time line in this book. The flashback chapters gave good background to the relationships this group has built together over the years. The build up to the rip in their group that happens takes a long time, though. For this reason the book dragged for me. Don't get me wrong, I love a good build up, but it just kept getting mentioned so much in the present to take so long to reveal it in the past. It made the writing seem flat.
The characters were likable enough but didn't stand out as anything special for me. All of them with their past drama causing some kind of emotional stilt in their lives. It was too easy and didn't give the characters enough depth for me. Everyone afraid of love or seeking it so much as if it's the only thing there is. Sutton and Everett have the most growth and development while the other three in the group were just kind of bland. I didn't find them to be anything special. But overall all the characters were a bit flat.
There is a lot of build up to why Sutton and Everett hate each other in the present. I thought for sure it would be this huge reveal. Something that was just unforgivable that they would need to work through with a ton of emotion. What I got wasn't that at all. The conflict didn't seem like something that would have caused so much enmity between them.
This one had a lot of promise, but the emotional punch just didn't hit as I thought it would. I did enjoy Bakley's writing and I am looking forward to what she will give us in the future.
3.5/5 stars
Author:
Sally Blakely studied theatre, media arts, English, and education at The University of Montana. When she's not writing, she's reading, or making far too many playlists. She lives in Montana with her husband.
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