Summer Rental by Rektok Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Scare Factor: 💀💀 | Plot: 📕📕📕 | Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Length:📱 267 pages | Genre: YA Horror | POV: First
Dates Read: 06.08.24 – 06.19.24



✴✴✴ TW: B*llying; B*dyshaming; Gory; Mention of S*icide, H*mophobia, Conv*rsion Camps, Self H*rm, and Ab*se ✴✴✴


🕊️ ➞ Tropes:

🔪👤 Serial Killer 👤🔪
🔪🩸Slasher 🩸🔪
🕵🏻Whodunit🕵🏻
❓👤Red Herring👤❓
🚫Trust No One 🚫
🩸Gruesome 🩸
👩🏻 Final Girl Vibes 👩🏻
👻No One’s Safe 👻
👤👺Hooded / Masked Killer 👺👤
👹😵‍💫Crazed Motive😵‍💫👹
👻👺Horror/Urban Legend Inspired👺👻
🌞🩸 Bloody Summer 🩸🌞



🕊️ ➞ Synopsis:

Mean Girls meets Scream in this heart-pounding psychological thriller about a group of friends stranded on an island with a serial killer on the loose.

Riley March and her friends are headed to ritzy, remote Palm Key Island for one last blow-out party weekend before college. It’s the vacation of beautiful beaches, epic nightlife, and hot guys like Riley’s crush—superstar soccer player Sebastian Ramos. There’s just one catch. Everyone on this trip is hiding something. Riley is hiding her past in order to fit in. Sebastian is hiding his feelings for Riley. And someone is hiding what really happened to Jordyn Chang, a classmate who mysteriously died last summer.

Things take a dark turn after one of their friends goes missing, and a hurricane cuts the group off from civilization. Trapped inside their rental house, a killer stalks them one by one. No one is safe. Everyone’s a suspect. As the body count rises, Riley and her friends will have to confront the secrets they’ve been keeping if they want to stay alive…



🕊️ ➞ Progress Notes & Initial Thoughts:

18% // Ugh these mean girls suck. To use someone’s closeted sexuality as blackmail is disgusting. Especially to someone you call a “friend.” Breaks my heart that Jordyn ended up taking her life. I hope Val is the first to go in this slasher. She’s a rich narcissist at its finest.

53% // Jonathan is just so pitiful and puppy dogish. I hope he just turns out to be an awkward kid with depression and a crush, and *not* the killer.



🕊️ ➞ My Favorite Quotes:

“The capacity women have for destruction is infinite. The harm we can inflict on others—is boundless. We don’t need a man for any of that.”

🕊️ ➞ My Thoughts:

Summer Rental was a summertime slasher set in Palm Key, Florida where six teens go out to the beach for one last hoorah. A hurricane had other plans for their weekend and they became trapped inside with a stalker lurking around. Most of the story was the build-up of suspense and the go-around of the obvious secret in the room that our FMC wasn’t aware of. I enjoyed the mystery of the plot, but I found it was a bit slow at times. None of the characters were particularly likable, although that was the point of the revenge plot arc and revelation. I liked Ross’s implementation of what real-life bullying is like among teenage girls and the psychological warfare it entails. I believe Summer Rental was an ode to all the girls who have been bullied by other girls, even their friends, and how we wish we could’ve handled it. Ross wrote the perfect band of mean girls.

The characters I felt the most bad for were Riley and Jonathan. Poor Riley just got caught up with the popular girls and their secrets so she was just considered collateral damage. Jonathan’s arc was the most heartbreaking of them all and frankly, he deserved so much better. #JusticefortheChangs

Summer Rental was an entertaining slasher with a satisfying revenge plot and killer that was a bit predictable, but that could just be because I’ve come to pick up on these things. If you love slashers, mean girls getting their gory karma, beachy reads, or all of the above… then I’m not really sure why you’re still reading this ?? GO! READ! COMMENT! And I’ll see you next time. 😉

xo,

L.B.


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