Have you ever read a book that was so powerful it has stayed with you months or even years after reading it? I have my favourites, Sense and Sensibility, Ingo, Black Beauty to name a few… Recently, Akemi Dawn Bowman’s Summer Bird Blue was added to that list.
Summer Bird Blue is a YA novel about two sisters, Rumi and Leah who dream of becoming musicians until an accident changes everything. Akemi Dawn Bowman writes a beautifully and emotionally delicate tale of grief, sisterhood, family and finding the music again after loss. It stayed with me because the author has a way of weaving these intense, hard-hitting and complex emotions together with gorgeously real characters and great moments of love and laughter. Rumi is the central character whose grief and rage at the loss in her family nearly consumes her. She ponders and questions herself and how she feels about life, how she feels about relationships and most of all how she feels about music after everything that she’s gone through.
It is a beautiful story and you’ll definitely want to stay for her fantastic relationship with Mr Watanabe and his pug as well as the lovable surfer Kai who have each faced their own struggles. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a beautifully well-written emotionally moving story that stays with you long after you have finished it.
Five Stars. *****
Emma
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Emma's Corner 
I’ll put it on my To Be Read list!
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