YVO’S SHORTIES #255 – The Summer Seekers & Faithless

Time for another round of Yvo’s Shorties! This time around a contemporary I enjoyed and a thriller sequel which was slightly ruined due to one of the characters.

Title: The Summer Seekers
Author: Sarah Morgan
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
First published: May 18th 2021
Publisher: HQ
Finished reading: September 10th 2021
Pages: 400

“It had taken decades for her to understand that loneliness wasn’t a lack of people in your life, but a lack of people who knew and understood you.

I love a good road trip story and I love stories with an older main character, so The Summer Seekers sounded like a perfect match. I’ve been looking forward to read it, and what better way to forget about the dreary winter weather than reading a fun summer read? And while it wasn’t exactly the hilarious romcom I was expecting it to be, I still mostly enjoyed my time with The Summer Seekers. First of all I have to say that I LOVE Kathleen’s POV. Her character is absolutely brilliant and I both loved learning more about her past and seeing her in the present. Martha’s POV took a little longer to warm up to, but as I loved the road trip part of the story things vastly improved after she met Kathleen and they started their journey together. The same can’t be said about Liza’s POV sadly. It took me a long long time to try to connect to her, as there was just something about her personality that was a turn off for me. The whole cheating/love triangle vibe wasn’t really helping either… And I think that I never did warm up to her part of the story. Which is sad really, because if The Summer Seekers had just focused on the road trip part I probably would have added an extra star to my rating. The character growth in both Kathleen and Martha was great though, I loved the descriptions of the road trip and their banter was spot on too. As a whole, it was still an enjoyable read despite my lackluster response to one of the three POVs.

Title: Faithless
(Grant County #5)
Author: Karin Slaughter
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
First published: August 30th 2005
Publisher: Arrow
Finished reading: September 13rd 2021
Pages: 530

“He had a point, but Lena knew firsthand that sometimes people did things just because they were fucking nuts.”

Grant County book number five, and I’m definitely more than ready to see the back of Lena now. Faithless is by far my least favorite of the series, and I’m really starting to struggle with having to deal with Lena all the time. I know she is supposed to be an intriguing character with dept, major flaws as well as development throughout the series, but I’m just not feeling it. That said, I wasn’t really feeling the whole drama with Sara and Jeffrey either, and I’m never a fan of a religious angle in the first place. True, there was so much more going on as well, but as a whole there was just something about Faithless that made me take ages to actually finish it. This might also have to do with the focus on domestic abuse and the way not only Lena, but also other characters behave. I do hope the final book will work better for me in the end, but I’ve heard there is plenty of Lena in that one too so I’m not looking forward to it all that much to be honest.