In the heat of summer, the past can become hazy. . .
For twenty years, Nina Drayton has told herself that she must have seen her sister, Tamara, being murdered by the family babysitter – Josie Jackson. That she doesn’t remember it because she was five, and amnesia is a normal trauma response.
But now, with the anniversary of Tamara’s death approaching and true crime investigators revisiting the case, Nina finds it harder to suppress her doubts.
Returning to her family’s sparkling villa on the Cote d’Azur for the first time since the murder, she wants to uncover more about the summer that changed so many lives.
Because if she was wrong, then she sent an innocent woman to jail – and the real killer is still walking free.
I really enjoyed Katie’s debut novel The Girls of Summer so this was a definite must buy for me. The setting was so evocative and I loved the tension between the two different versions of this small town on the Cote d’Azure. There’s the statement holiday home of the Drayton’s, architect designed and jutting out over the sea as if imposing itself on nature. This house and the parties held there in the summer season are all about the rich heiress impressing her friends and other society families holidaying in the area. From it’s viewpoint on the cliff top, the beach shack and the local dive school seem rather shabby but these belong to the families who live here all year round and are simply trying to make a living. They work hard, long hours in the summer season so that they can make the money for the rest of the year, when the everything closes and people like the Draytons return to London or go skiing in the Alps. Through two timelines we’re shown what happens when these two sets of people collide, sparking an event that changes lives and still affects those involved in the present day. Nina Drayton has returned to sort out her mother’s affairs and decide what to do with the crumbling property they never use. However, her visit has stirred up memories of that summer when her sister Tamara died and she gave evidence that put a young local woman called Josie in prison. Now released, Josie has returned to the dive shop her family owned, now run by her brother and his girlfriend. She will be moving in with them until she can get her life on track, but in the meantime Tamara’s murder has become a social media sensation and a podcaster is in town researching the case. Will Josie be able to build a life for herself with this much publicity surrounding the case and will Nina be able to shake off the uneasy feeling she has about what she saw the night her sister died?
There were shades of Atonement in this story that explores memory, identity and how we view events at different points in life. As a child Nina gave her evidence, but even after years of psychology training she’s unsure about exactly what she saw. Her husband Ryan asks her outright:
“How do you know you weren’t making it up? Kids make things up all the time right?”
It’s the first time anyone has ever had the guts to ask her the very thing she has always wondered. It’s something she has tried to cover up, shove to the back of her mind and starve out of her body. She’s tormented by the elusive nature of her memories, as one summer becomes conflated with several others, just a stream of partying adults and often forgotten children. Josie was in and out of the Drayton’s house that summer, either earning money with her friend Hannah for keeping an eye on Nina and the guests smaller children or by invite when Blake Drayton started to take an interest in her. The author takes us back in time between that summer and the present when Josie has been released from prison. Josie has always claimed to be innocent and her yearning for an ordinary life is very endearing. I felt for her as she struggles to keep hold of her sense of self in a world where other people will only see an ex-prisoner. She may have served her sentence but to others she will always be a murderer, so she’s not expecting to be given a chance. She’s surprised when Nic stops to pass the time of day and asks if she would like to go out. We’re shown exactly who Josie is when she feels uncomfortable in the posh restaurant he takes her to and they ditch their booking for lobster rolls at the beach shack instead. When we see her with her brother or out in the water we can see how at home she is here, in tune with nature and the simple things in life.
The author uses transcripts from TikTok videos and the true crime podcast to show us how human lives are no more than a commodity to be packaged in sensational one minute reels to keep the conversation going. Engagement is the goal and there’s plenty, showing us exactly what happens when people become gripped by a puzzle to solve forgetting that behind the headlines are real people trying to live their lives. Here the truth is especially elusive. Josie is fixated on the person who is destroying her second chance, just throwing out wild theories and ludicrous cliffhangers for her followers to pass judgement on. Josie has been judged and served her time, so she didn’t expect to be tried in the court of social media opinion once again. We never truly know who is behind the anonymous profile picture, it could be someone next door or it could be someone on the other side of the world. When we go back to that summer we can see that both Tamara Drayton and her brother Blake are damaged by their upbringing. When he shows an interest in Josie she’s unbelievably flattered. She knows there is a gulf between their lifestyles and for a teenage girl attention from the wealthy, good looking Blake Drayton gives her a sense of acceptance. This, much younger Josie, would stay in the posh restaurant because she’s not comfortable enough to say ‘this isn’t me.’ It’s this uncertainty and inadequacy that Blake has noticed, he sees the local girls as expendable but he assures Josie that it’s over with his rich girlfriend and he really likes her. Meanwhile, Josie’s friend Hannah has struck up a friendship with the rich and popular Tamara Drayton. However assured she seems, under the expensive clothes and air of sophistication, Tamara is still a teenage girl struggling with her own identity and lack of support from her mother. As the days become hotter, the tension between these young people is certain to boil over.
I found the final third of this book impossible to put down. I was waiting desperately for a confrontation between Nina and Josie, something that could help both of them. I wasn’t sure whether these tentative connections would spark another terrible event or whether as adults there could be reconciliation. Would Nina be able to voice her uncertainty and guilt? Would Hannah reach out to her friend, now released and needing to hear about what happened between her and Tamara? At the very least I was rooting for Josie to find a peace within herself. As their present lives threaten to move out of control, Josie starts to have a dream she’s had all her life at times of pressure. A dream of falling..
“The future seems to gape in front of Josie, vast and undefined […] a fall from a very high cliff”.
I really wanted her to think about the times she dives, with all the confidence of someone who’s done this since they were a child. Underneath the water she is both at home and awed by the wonder of what’s living just underneath the surface, especially when she dives for the first time since her release. I wanted her to remember how comfortable she is in the water and realise that it never mattered if she fell: she knows how to swim.
Meet the Author
Katie Bishop is a writer and journalist based in the UK. Her debut novel, The Girls of Summer published in 2023 with Transworld, UK and St. Martin’s Press, US. Her second novel, High Season, was published in August 2025.
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