The young boys of Cutter Island, like Jake, eagerly anticipate the arrival of the summer girls each year. That eagerness isn’t shared by the parents of Cutter Island as the island’s streets become choked with tourists, but with tourists comes income for the islanders. For young Jake, the tourist influx in the summer of 1965 brings him his Summer Girl, Andi. Complete with gorgeous red curly hair, a keen mind, and everything it takes to turn a young boy into a man, Andi is as smitten with Jake as he with her. Their young love blossoms. Then, suddenly fate cruelly steps in to separate them before the summer ends. What follows for Jake and Andi, under the sensitive pen of Linda Watkins, is a sweet, sad love story that will touch all who read Summer Girl.

But do not think for one moment that Summer Girl is young adult or simple romantic fiction. The reasons for the sudden separation, which lasts for many years, are bad ones, ugly in fact, and it takes three narrators, Jake, Andi and Sammy, to fill in all the details of Jake and Andi’s story. Having three narrators in such a short book is unusual, but Linda Watkins handles it beautifully, and when one finishes reading, you marvel at this novel approach to literary fiction. It truly works.
Watkins is also skilled in her use of dialogue to reveal characters, in providing just the right amount of description to nail settings and moods, and in creating curiosity that keeps us turning pages. Even as we close the book, we are left wondering, as the protagonists are, if first love is indeed the only true love.

There is one caveat that comes with this review of Summer Girl by Linda Watkins: if you have ever been sexually abused by a family member, be prepared for the possibility of some uneasiness with what Andi will share when it’s her turn to narrate. Andi’s side of her story as the Summer Girl is, sadly, the story of far too many young females. Well done, Linda Watkins. Highly recommended reading.

Summer Girl is a literary fiction/coming of age novel written by Linda Watkins. It had been over twelve years since Jake had last visited Cutter Island, the small island on Maine’s southern coast where he had grown up. He had not really planned on ever going back there again. There were just too many memories and, when his father died and his mother sold their waterfront home, Cutter Island no longer held any pull on the author who had made California his home. His wife had suggested the trip both for him and his two boys, who she felt should get to know their grandmother, uncle and cousins. And so he found himself disembarking from the mainland ferry and being profoundly moved by the sight of an older man unloading traps from his lobster, and being helped by a skinny kid who reminded him so powerfully of himself, twenty years before that.

Cutter Island became a different place during the summer season. The residents’ wild and natural island home bustled with the summer people who were, themselves, a force of nature. Jake helped his uncle prepare the clambakes that the summer folk would order, spending long hours building the pits that would cook the lobsters, clams and other clambake staples. And he was sixteen, watching the ferry pull in with its current load of summer people as he helped his lobsterman dad when he saw her -- the girl with curly red hair and the most penetrating blue-gray eyes, who would become his summer girl. Every moment they shared deepened their sense of belonging and rapport. Jake could never have believed that a summer girl would even notice him, but Andi was different, and before too long, the two young adults had fallen deeply in love.

Linda Watkins’ coming of age/literary fiction novel, Summer Girl, begins with a fairy-tale romance that somehow goes crazily, tragically awry. Watkins shares the tale first through Jake’s eyes and then she gives Andi’s perspective, and I found myself mesmerized by their individual stories as well as the main tale itself, which is set in the unsurpassed beauty that is the Maine coast. I loved watching as the two uncertain and shy teens bring out the best in each other and then felt deeply involved in following the aftermath of that disturbing evening that changed everything. Watkins powerfully addresses the issues of the sexual and emotional abuse of minors by parents or caregivers, and its continuing impact is seen so clearly in Andi’s situation. Seeing how Jake and Andi continue to grow and become better somehow, simply because of their relationship no matter how short, is inspiring and makes for a marvelous reading experience. Summer Girl is most highly recommended.