Always Summer. The Nocturnals: An endearing and witty novel of love and friendship from the bestselling author of The Best Kind of Beautiful

 1997

Sweet, innocent schoolgirl Nina watches him through her arched bedroom windows, and falls in love with the boy next door, who looks as if he’s come from an Evelyn Waugh novel. Her favourite book is Anne of Green Gables. Hunter Bailey, the boy with the shaggy hair, isn’t interested in Nina. Of course, he isn’t. Hunter loves Beatrice.

Beatrice, a wild Goth girl, sleeps with Hunter in the boatshed after school, and writes poetry in her troubled home. Her mother is a divorced alcoholic, and she takes care of her stepbrother, Lenny, buying him dinosaur gifts. Beatrice is fundamentally kind. She is especially kind to Harriet and Cosmo.

Harriet and Cosmo are two outsiders. Harriet, ethereal, and skinny, is like quicksilver, so quiet and ghostly that you can imagine her slipping through closed doors. Cosmo, the tall, thin, scholarship boy falls for her quickly, and remains in love with her forever.

Together, Nina, Hunter, Beatrice, Harriet and Cosmo form The Nocturnals, meeting secretly at night. They hold initiation rituals, have midnight feasts, swim in the moonlight, and dangerously stick their heads too far out of cars. They stay at Hunter’s family’s beach shack where it is ‘always summer,’ but secrets and hidden traumas will come back to haunt them.

2002

Hunter Bailey, now a top journalist, is coming back to Australia to collect a prestigious prize. The Nocturnals, now in their early thirties, decide to meet, but the group has been shattered by failed friendships and searing heartbreaks. Is it possible to find forgiveness, and redemption, or is it too late for The Nocturnals?

This deeply moving and poignant novel of love, friendship, nostalgia and traumatic families will stay with you for a long time. Beautifully written from each character’s POV, it contains multiple layers with several subsets of stories, and complex relationships. The shocking mystery at the centre of the novel certainly gave me a jolt, and ties the story together extremely well.

I loved this novel, and I found it intensely emotional — in a good way! Keep a box of tissues with you with this one if you’re inclined to cry easily. I practically sobbed at the end. 

I received this free ebook fromNetGalley in return for an honest review.