One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon

 

From Goodreads

'And you still love him?'
'Every second of every minute of every hour of every day…'

While on holiday in Dorset one summer, Alice meets Joe, a guy working at the local pub. She's eighteen and on the brink of starting university, while Joe's life is seemingly going nowhere. But despite their differences, the pair fall hopelessly and desperately in love. And then summer comes to an end and they are dramatically torn apart.

Alice heads off to university in Cambridge where she gets a part-time job punting on the River Cam and slowly picks up the pieces of her broken heart. One day Lukas - a gorgeous golden boy from Cambridge University - spies her and it's not long before Alice falls for his charms.

Months turns into years, but then Joe comes back into Alice's life again in a way that she could never have imagined. While Alice lives her ordinary life with Lukas, she has to watch from the sidelines as Joe's life becomes evermore extraordinary. She never stopped loving him, but he's out of her reach now, surely? And what about Lukas?

My thoughts

I rated this a 7/10.

This is a well written rom-com that was a nice easy read and perfect to put down and pick up at will. This would make a great holiday read and is perfect for taking away any winter blues that you might have, should you decide to read it during the cold, dark long mights.

Alice and Joe strike up a friendship that soon develops into more. They are young and in love, with hardly a care in the world or so it seems to us at first. Love never runs smoothly though and fate has other ideas in store for them.

As the story develops Alice appears to move on, but never forgets her first love. Her heart might have been broken by Joe but time heals and Lukas comes into her life. Lukas appears to be too good to be true and is a perfect gentleman, but does he treat Alice in the way that he should?

Fate often has a habit of getting in our way and things often never run smoothly. To find out if things run smoothly then I advise you to give the story a go.

I enjoyed the story on the whole. At first Lukas appeared to be a very likeable character, but as you get to know his character more he changes and not for the better in my opinion, however I was routing for him at times but I could tell that things might not work out well for him.

I enjoyed the character of Alice and felt sorry for her when the relationship between her and Joe faltered, but at such a young age you do learn to deal with things no matter how hard it might seem at the time. 

Do any of us ever forget our first love? Alice certainly didn't and you will see what lengths she goes to after the summer that ended the relationship between her and Joe, to try and find Joe. In fact she never stops looking for him throughout her life, he is always there at the back of her mind despite other relationships.

Will she ever find him or will she give up and get on with her life?