I will be honest, I was 200 pages in before I even felt connected to the story. So please be aware of that when you go into this book. This book deals with some pretty heavy themes of grief, the guilt of still being alive when the person you loved most died, the feeling of abandonment when someone you love is grieving too and the power of speaking the truth even when it might hurt someone you love. This is such a beautiful story about the darkness of grief, the effect it can have on mental health and the power of friendship. At first Rumi is still grieving and decides she doesn’t want to make friends but eventually she sees what a benefit they are to her and how each one helps in different ways. While Rumi is with her Aunty Ani she meets and befriends her Aunty’s neighbours – Kai and Mr Watanabe. Whilst this was all very sad, it happened really fast and so I didn’t really have much time to connect with the characters. All to soon Lea is killed in a car accident and Rumi is left to deal with this grief eating away at her on her own after their mom decides it’s best for Rumi to go and visit her Aunty Ani – their mom’s sister – in Hawaii. Okay, so this book starts and we meet Rumi, her younger sister Lea and their mom.

I don’t even really know where to start…I’m still crying over this book. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content in my review.

Thank you so much to InkRoad for sending me a free copy of this book for review. With the help of the “boys next door”-a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago-Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.Īching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of-she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. This book did not disappoint, keep reading for my review! I’d heard a lot of good things about Starfish but I hadn’t yet picked it up, and then Ink Road accepted my request to review Summer Bird Blue and I was excited to be reading not only a new to me author, but a book written by an author that most people seemed to love. Thank you so much to InkRoad for sending me a free copy of this book to review.

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman