The Summers Between Us by Noreen Nanja tells the story of Lia Juma, a successful corporate lawyer living a carefully crafted life to live up to her parents expectations of being the perfect daughter. She’s on track to potentially fulfilling her parents next dream for her: to get married as she’s dating a man that her mother would approve of. With Lia on the cusp of taking her career to the next level, she’s tasked with traveling back to her family’s vacation home in Pike Bay – a task she does not want to do – as Pike Bay is full of memories and secrets she’d rather leave there and never revisit.
Without much of a choice, Lia heads to Pike Bay, where she faces her first love and neighbor, Wesley Forest. As Lia prepares to spend some time in her family home with Wes next door, old wounds and feelings resurface where Lia must decide whether she wants to heal from the past and carve out the future and happiness she’s always wanted, or continue her trajectory in being the perfect immigrant daughter and live up to her parents wishes but remain unhappy and unfulfilled.
The story reminded me a lot of Christina Lauren’s Love and Other Words with the childhood friends to lovers angle, especially as Wes and Lia’s friendship blossomed into something else. I loved how Lia’s culture and upbringing was highlighted. While we don’t share the same background, I can identify with the burden that daughters of immigrant parents carry to succeed and support their families. Lia was under an incredible amount of pressure from her parents to become someone they can be proud of but also with the added weight of supporting the family in some way/shape/form. The pressure of not succeeding or becoming what your parents wanted adds an additional weight of feeling like you failed them and that their efforts as immigrants to give you a better life and future were futile; it’s a lot for children to carry. The difference in how this affects children with this family dynamic was present in Lia’s relationship with her sister. It felt real to see how Lia struggled with finding the balance between being who her parents want her to be versus who she feels she truly is. Also quick shout out for the migraine representation. As a fellow migraine girly, her migraines were realistically depicted and showed how much of an impact they can have.
Noreen Nanja does a great job in showing Lia’s relationship with her parents, the tense relationship with her sister, and the lack of understanding from Wes regarding his and her cultural differences, in addition to the buildup and blossoming of Lia and Wes’s friendship into love. The dual timelines help paint the picture fully, though it is a bit of a slow journey into finding out what really happened between Wes and Lia, it’s worth the wait and brings together why Lia’s life is the way that it is. Overall, I gave The Summers Between Us four stars for weaving in a complex childhood friends to lovers story with dual timelines rich with the cultural nuances of life as a daughter to immigrant parents.
Special thank you to Books Forward for sending me an ARC for review.
