Review: The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall

Title: The Book of Summers
Author: Emylia Hall
Publisher: Headline Review
Rating: 5 stars

This is, without a doubt, my 'book of the month' for March. It was recommended to me by Lucy, who blogs over at The Unlikely Bookworm, and it had a lot of buzz surrounding it on Twitter at the time of publication, so I was quick to pick up a gorgeous hard-cover copy.

Here is the blurb, taken from Amazon:

Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel.
Inside is a letter informing her that her long-estranged mother has died, and a scrapbook Beth has never seen before. Entitled The Book of Summers, it's stuffed with photographs and mementos complied by her mother to record the seven glorious childhood summers Beth spent in rural Hungary.
It was a time when she trod the tightrope between separated parents and two very different countries; her bewitching but imperfect Hungarian mother and her gentle, reticent English father; the dazzling house of a Hungarian artist and an empty-feeling cottage in deepest Devon. And it was a time that came to the most brutal of ends the year Beth turned sixteen.
Since then, Beth hasn't allowed herself to think about those years of her childhood. But the arrival of The Book of Summers brings the past tumbling back into the present; as vivid, painful and vital as ever.

Split between contemporary London, and rural Hungary of years before, this is an atmospheric and evocative novel that takes you through Beth's childhood in a series of snapshot memories.

It is a story of love and loss, of secrets and lies. It is also a charming coming-of-age story, taking us through the seven summers Beth spent in Hungary as she moved from her childhood into her teens. We feel an intense longing, Beth's need to belong in this foreign country with her mother - and how out of place she feels at home with her father.

We are taken through the creation of Beth's adult (or at least teenage) identity, moving with her as she develops her sense of self. Behind all of this, in the heat of the Hungarian summers, lies a haze of lies that eventually prove devastating, and will threaten everything that Beth has come to know.

This is a fairly leisurely read, filled with lovingly-crafted characters, set against a stunningly vivid Hungarian background, and with a heartbreaking revelation that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

A fantastic debut novel from Emylia Hall, and one that I will be re-visiting time and again.