Review of ‘Summer desires’ by Emily King

2.50 Stars. I was hoping for a great lesbian beach romance read, unfortunately, this was too light- light in plot and substance. This is my second book by King and I’m sad to say I found the same issues with this book as I did her debut. The only difference is I liked her debut a tiny bit more than this book.

This story was about a teacher and lifeguard who want to have a summer fling. The biggest issue for me was the lack of character depth. I didn’t know anything more about Sarah when she was a teacher and had a nasty ex whereas Amy was a lifeguard and had an opinionated family. That was about it, two facts about each character. I don’t even know if Sarah had a family. I can’t even recall if it was mentioned that she had any living relatives. Everything was just way too superficial with no depth. And when the characters were together they didn’t talk about anything important so their actual connection was on the surface too.

I struggled with how shallow the characters were. Amy hated anyone who liked her for her hot lifeguard body. But, she quickly decided while she and Sarah would probably not click in a relationship, she would not give up on her because a body like Sarah’s was too good to pass up. While Sarah’s perspective was that Amy was hot and cold and a jerk at times, but because of her hot lifeguard body, Sarah was willing to put up with her attitude. Can you get more superficial than these two? They actually deserved each other but I didn’t think they deserved my reading time.

While this book was on the shorter side already, I think it should have been a novella. I just don’t think there was enough substance here and the book felt stretched to fit full length. Like in King’s debut there was just too much time focused on everyday things like food. The food they ate was way more detailed than either main character was. When two characters sit to have dinner it should be to talk about something that lets the characters and readers know more about the other characters, instead, in this book it was to give me the recipe for fish tacos.

While this book wasn’t for me, It wasn’t horrible or offensive it was just too light. I like some fluffy beach reads but this was beachy read to the extreme. I do see some potential in King but she has to make her character more than cardboard cut-outs. I really hope we will see improvement in her next book or I’ll have to realize she is just not an author for me.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.