One S’more Summer
Beth Merlin
(The Campfire Series, #1)
Published by: Ink Monster LLC
Publication date: May 30th 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary

If you love Sophie Kinsella and Emily Giffin, you’ll love this heartwarming debut from a fresh voice in contemporary chick-lit that offers a lighthearted and fun take on friendship, love, and how to recover from past mistakes.

For twenty long years, Gigi Goldstein has been pining away for her best friend’s guy. She knows it’s wrong and it has to stop, but she hasn’t been able to let go ever since they all met on the bus to summer camp back when they were 7 years old. The same week that her best friends finally announce their wedding date, Gigi loses her high-profile design job. With all of her dreams unravelling, she runs to the last place she remembers being happy.

Taking the Head Counselor position at Camp Chinooka, Gigi hopes to reclaim the joy she felt as a camper, but the job isn’t all campfire songs and toasting marshmallows. Gigi’s girls are determined to make her look bad in front of the boys’ Head Counselor—the sexy but infuriating Perry—and every scrap of the campground is laced with memories.

When Gigi finally realizes she can’t escape the present by returning to her past, she’s forced to reexamine her life and find the true meaning of love. But will she be able to mend fences and forgive herself before she loses her one real shot at happiness?

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SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW

Gigi, Alicia, and Joshua have been friends for 18 years, starting at camp. Along the way Alicia and Joshua fall in love, leaving Gigi as the third wheel. She is best friends with Alicia and in love with Joshua herself. When Alicia goes to London for the summer and tells Joshua they are taking a break, Gigi and Josh have an affair that ends when Alicia returns. But neither Gigi nor Josh tell Alicia about the affair.

For reasons due to her work, Alicia moves up her and Josh’s wedding date. Gigi is depressed, gets fired from her job, and decides to lick her wounds at Camp Chinooka.

The idea of running away to camp is a pretty cute one even if the one doing the running is in her late 20s. What I really didn’t respond to was Gigi’s character. She’s self-absorbed and dramatic and upon meeting Perry she’s really unpleasant, which she stays until she decides she likes him. Why he ever reciprocated was beyond me. So that combined with her never talking to her best friend about Joshua just made her kind of unlikable to me.

One of the girl codes you hear about all of the time is you don’t date your friend’s ex unless you’ve talked to your friend. Gigi just went after what she wanted without considering anyone else.

The writing was good for the most part. There was a lot of description of the camp, which might make you campgoers nostalgic.

This probably falls more into the chick lit vein than the romance.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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rating: 

 3 butterflies and a ladybug

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Author Bio:

Beth Merlin has a BA from The George Washington University where she minored in Creative Writing and a JD from New York Law School. She’s a native New Yorker who loves anything Broadway, rom-coms, her daughter Hadley, and a good maxi dress. She was introduced to her husband through a friend she met at sleepaway camp and considers the eight summers she spent there to be some of the most formative of her life. One S’more Summer is Beth’s debut novel.

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