Our Deadly Summer is the cosy crime novel all Irish millennials need to read

The plot will hook you from the very first page, and you'll find yourself wondering what will happen next, even when you're not reading. Trust me, I couldn't help but wonder what Laura and Dee were up to when I was picking up my messages in SuperValu. They're such lifelike characters, one of Breen and McLysaght's strong points, and ones you will find yourself both relating to and worrying about as the story unfolds. The writers are magic when it comes to creating such lifelike but lovable characters, who feel like girls you went to secondary school with or people you befriended on your own J1.

Fans of the original Aisling series won't be disappointed by this standalone novel because it's a triumph. It's the perfect novel to read when you're on your summer holidays or when it's lashing rain, and you're feeling like escaping adulthood and going back to your college days, minus the J1 murder, of course.

What is Our Deadly Summer about?

Laura and Dee haven't spoken since the day they buried a body together. It was supposed to be the best summer of their lives. A break from university, from parents, from wasting their time on Irish boys with farmer's tans. They'd imagined flirting with Ryan Phillippe on a New York rooftop. Instead, with summer jobs waitressing at a country club on Long Island, pickings are slim. Mikey is a bully. Marco is off limits. Jose is angry.

Mr Haight is a sleaze. Josh is too keen. And Other Josh… he's something else entirely. It's a miracle only one of them ends up dead. Dee is pretty sure she didn't mean to kill him. Laura, to her credit, never asked. Not until she sends an email, out of the blue, more than twenty years later.

It's finally time to mend the biggest heartbreak of that summer; Laura wants her best friend back.

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However, what really makes this story special is the bond between Laura and Dee. Female friendship is at the heart of this story, and it's what really makes this cosy crime novel stand out. It gives the novel so much more depth and heart, and has a similar comfort to Marian Keyes' writing. There's a familiarity in the way Breen and McLysaght write that will make you reflect on the friendships you formed in college, and leave you daydreaming about the summers of the early 2000s, where everything felt that little bit easier.