Tackling the TBR, a New Special Feature!
Tackling the TBR: The Summer I Died
If you’re a book worm like myself, there’s a chance your TBR (to be read) pile is bigger than Smaug’s coin collection. One book I’ve had sitting waiting to see the light of day for about 5 years is ‘The Summer I Died’ by Ryan C Thomas (Hissers, Born to Bleed, Rating Game). I’ve seen it mentioned time and time again in the reading groups I’m in on Facebook. However, I’ve always ended up reaching for something else when I’m ready to start a new book. I am going to use this column to explain to you why, in no uncertain terms, I am an idiot for letting this book sit there unread.
‘The Summer I Died was released in 2006 and the back of the book lets the reader know exactly what kind of journey they are going to be taking:
When Roger Huntington comes home from college for the summer and is met by his best friend, Tooth, he knows they're going to have a good time. A summer full of beer, comic books, movies, laughs, and maybe even girls. The sun is high and the sky is clear as Roger and Tooth set out to shoot beer cans at Bobcat Mountain. Just two friends catching up on lost time, two friends thinking about their futures. . . two friends suddenly thrust into the middle of a nightmare. Forced to fight for their lives against a sadistic killer with an arsenal of razor sharp blades and a hungry dog by his side. If they are to survive, they must decide: are heroes born, or are they made? Or is something more powerful happening to them? And more importantly, how do you survive when all roads lead to death?
If I saw this as a blurb for a movie, I would have started watching before I’d even finished reading the description. Which is really one of the best ways to describe The Summer I Died. Through Ryan C. Thomas’ use of language and POV, you feel like you’re watching a late night movie akin to Saw or Hostel.
Roger Huntington is an easy to relate to protagonist. The author builds a very believable student character who is just a very average, if somewhat nerdy, guy. You can relate to him because for all intents and purposes he is quite a dull person who likes comics, likes drinking and is trying to balance his new college life with the life he left behind at home. Most people have been there at some point.
The cast of The Summer I Died is really where Thomas shines. There’s not a lot of people to remember and by keeping the cast small, it allows the reader to see them being fleshed out and develop as the story continues. The Roger on page one is not the Roger at the end of the tale. His metamorphosis, however, is a painful and at times harrowing journey, but as a reader you can always identify with him. There were a couple of points in the book where I had to ask myself how I would react in some of the situations Roger finds himself. The answer was usually cry or scream – which is normally what happens.
Ryan C. Thomas doesn’t shy away from the emotional response to pain and abuse. He doesn’t paint Roger as a macho man who can take a beating and still come up with a witty quip. At times Roger is, for lack of a better word, a wimp. He chooses the coward’s option, but then in real life, that’s what I would do. Tooth, on the other hand, fills the role of “school best friend”. He can see the changes in his relationship with Roger and just wants his friend to follow the dreams they had as younger men. He starts as quite an annoying character who I rolled my eyes at frequently in the first twenty pages. Not because I didn’t like him, but more because that’s his purpose. He’s a tether to an older life that Roger is trying to move away from. He wants to be more than he is, and ultimately, who can blame him for that. By the end of the story though, the boys’ relationship, which is a focal point, is fleshed out to the point that I had quite genuine sympathy.
I am an idiot for letting this book sit there unread.
Which brings us onto the core theme of the book. Violence. There is a lot of violence, blood and gore in The Summer I Died. At no point is this not horrifyingly realistic. Every drop of blood spilled is drawn in a believable fashion. It’s a testament to the punishment the human body can take and as the reader, you honestly feel every cut, punch and slash that is delivered. This book will not be for everyone. I can’t sugar coat this or even beat around the bush – there will be people who straight up don’t like this book. The violence portrayed in the pages of ‘The Summer I Died’ is graphic and unapologetic. The villain is there for one purpose only – to draw blood and come up with more inventive ways of increasing fear in his prey. There’s some scenes with dice later on the book which I will always think of when I’m playing board games in the future.
The Summer I Died isn’t the largest of books, coming in at 216 pages. The first ten to twenty pages are a little slow, because Ryan C. Thomas is setting the scene and letting you see the characters as normal everyday people, doing normal everyday things. However once the action starts the pace of the book takes on a break neck speed which doesn’t stop until the final line of the book. I didn’t know when I bought it initially that this is book one of a series called The Roger Huntington Saga. As soon as I finished, I bought the other two books in the series and will be making sure they don’t sit gathering dust on the TBR pile.
Buy it here: Amazon UK