Summer Rental by Rektok Ross

Introduction

If you like teen dramas mixed with a little bit of gore, this book is right up your alley. I didn’t fully know what I was getting into when I started reading this book, and I think that’s for the best. I might have chickened out otherwise. But keep reading for my full thoughts on this fun Summer mystery.

About the Book

Mean Girls meets Scream in this heart-pounding psychological thriller about a group of friends stranded on an island with a serial killer on the loose.

Riley March and her friends are headed to ritzy, remote Palm Key Island for one last blow-out party weekend before college. It’s the vacation of a lifetime: beautiful beaches, epic nightlife, and hot guys like Riley’s crush—superstar soccer player Sebastian Ramos. There’s just one catch. Everyone on this trip is hiding something. Riley is hiding her past in order to fit in. Sebastian is hiding his feelings for Riley. And someone is hiding what really happened to Jordyn Chang, a classmate that mysteriously died last summer.

Things take a dark turn after one of their friends goes missing, and a hurricane cuts the group off from civilization. Trapped inside their rental house, a killer stalks them one by one. No one is safe. Everyone’s a suspect. As the body count rises, Riley and her friends will have to confront the secrets they’ve been keeping if they want to stay alive… (from Amazon.com)

My Thoughts

This book! I read the description before I checked it out from Kindle Unlimited, but I had no idea how dark it was going to get. So let that be a warning to you… this book really goes there.

Our main character Riley is keeping a secret. Her family doesn’t have a lot of money while the rest of the kids she hangs out with come from rich families who let them do whatever they want. Riley is happy to have her group of friends, although it does bug her a little bit when her spoiled friends boss her around, and treat her like a follower.

To that I say… it’s her choice to be their friend? Haha. But also, befriending the popular people can be a form of self preservation in high school, so it does make sense that she would try to get in good with the cool kids. Otherwise they could make her life a living hell!

That was my main frustration with this story. The fact that all of the characters are so awful and mean. Bullying is no joke and I couldn’t believe how awful these means girls are. But that’s exactly what the author was intending. That’s the point of the story. So in that case, I would say that Summer Rental is very well written.

I liked the fact that all of the characters were unique. Well, except for Nia, Cam, and Val. For the life of me I could not tell these girls apart! (That’s kind of a joke because Cam and Val are twins lol). But all of the other characters had interesting traits that made them memorable in my mind.

One last thing I will say is that this story was really enjoyable because it truly was very difficult to pin down what was going on. Due to the quantity of characters, backstories, and stuff going on I had no idea who could be good and who could be bad. The fact that everyone was trapped inside together during the storm made the mystery really fun.

I hate it when the power goes out and I can’t imagine how scary it would be to be in a dark house, WITH a potential murderer. Yikes.

Have you read this book? I found it to be a really enjoyable thriller and I’m looking forward to checking out her other book that’s out, called Ski Weekend.

xo Marian