Today I’m so excited to be part of Summer Bird Blue blog tour. This is my first book by Akemi and I absolutely adored it. It’s an emotional but beautiful book, about love, sisters, grief, friendship, support and family. Before I get to my review, here is a little bit more about the book.

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

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This is my first book from Akemi and it was beautiful, emotional but also hopeful. I’ll admit the first 10 pages is quite hard because that is when it happens, its honestly heartbreaking. I’d also like to say that I haven’t gone through grief like this and I hope I don’t anytime soon, so it hit me hard about how consuming it is. But whilst it’s harrowing this book, it’s also extraordinary.

Rumi and Lea are more than just sisters, they are best friends. Their whole lives they have shared everything especially music. Rumi has been all about helping and being there for Lea when their mum was working two jobs. One day, a tragic accident takes Lea’s life leaving Rumi, alone with the darkness, grief and anger. Suddenly Rumi’s mum, abandons her and sends her to live with her aunt in Hawaii, where she’s alone, angry at her mum, her sister and the world for having to deal with on her own. But what if unlikely friendships and the boy next door can help.

Summer Bird Blue is an incredibly moving story, I felt when I was reading this that I was driven by hope. Akemi’s writing is honest and harrowing to read, with Rumi’s all-consumed darkness in the beginning honestly felt earth-shattering. But the hope in her writing just made me race through this book. What I loved most was the unlikely relationships emerged especially with her elderly next door neighbour Mr.Watanabe she found silence and solace with him, he went through it himself it’s almost as if she needs that recognition, that supportive figure to understand her rather than her getting her to talk as Rumi will do that in her own time.

Akemi really highlights being a teenager and growing up, Rumi is a very strong-headed individual and the total opposite to Lea who was down to Earth. Rumi constantly questions and analyses boys, being in a relationship, romance, growing up, especially labelling herself. I really admired her for how we shouldn’t label things, or fall into the stereotype. She is trying so hard to be what Lea wants her to be even in death, but Rumi wants to fly on her own in her own direction. Her relationship with the next door neighbour, Kai was more than just a kiss, although as a romantic I wanted them to get together, Akemi proved me wrong as to who a guy can be a really great friend and it’s not about love, it’s about surviving and being fixed.

It’s beautiful inside and out. Through Rumi’s memories we got a sense of who Lea was, their sisterly relationship and how special and true it really was. We got flashbacks into life before and after the crash that really solidified the characters and the storyline. Akemi has created a masterpiece of a novel which encompasses so much, grief, love, family, friendships, identity, and growing-up.

Rating – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Ink Road books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.