Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2018
384 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A mixed race teen struggles to find her way back to her love of music in the wake of her sister's tragic death in this incisive, lyrical novel.
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.
Aching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible.
"Starred Review. Will leave readers breathless." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A strikingly moving book about teenage grief." - Kirkus
"Achingly beautiful and exquisitely crafted, Summer Bird Blue is an emotionally raw and utterly honest story about loss, about hope, and about finding the courage to sing your own song. Akemi Dawn Bowman's writing is lyrical and full of life. I was riveted from the first page." - Samira Ahmed, New York Times bestselling author of Love, Hate & Other Filters
"Summer Bird Blue is a quiet but powerful exploration of music and love, and their ability to heal grief over time. Like my favorite sad songs, this book settled deep into my heart and refused to let go." - Brandy Colbert, author of Little & Lion and Finding Yvonne
"Summer Bird Blue brings us the gift of Rumi, unflinchingly honest in herself, her music and the ways she loves and doesn't. I got (sobbingly) lost in the rhythms of this beautiful exploration of what it means to grieve when you haven't figured out who you are or your place in the world. With a Hawaiian setting so vividly alive that it becomes essential to Rumi's healing, this is a gut-wrenching, must-read novel." - S.K. Ali, award-winning author of Saints and Misfits
"A beautifully complex exploration of grief, guilt, and the healing power of art and friendship. Akemi Dawn Bowman's Summer Bird Blue will make your heart ache and leave your soul hopeful."- Ashley Herring Blake, author of Suffer Love and Girl Made of Stars
This information about Summer Bird Blue was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Akemi Dawn Bowman is the author of Starfish and Summer Bird Blue. She is also a Ravenclaw and Star Wars enthusiast, who served in the US Navy for five years and has a BA in social sciences from UNLV. Originally from Las Vegas, she currently lives in Scotland with her husband, two children, and their Pekingese mix.
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