A Darkly Funny Summer of Friendship and Buried Secrets
Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen blend Irish humour with mystery in a noughties Long Island summer where friendship, waitressing and a buried body collide. The hook is deliciously specific, with funny, heartfelt suspense and a sting of nostalgia.
In Stock
Our Deadly Summer
Collect 50 Reward Points
- Guaranteed Delivery on
- Free Delivery from
- Order by 6pm for Same Day Dispatch
A Darkly Funny Summer of Friendship and Buried Secrets
Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen blend Irish humour with mystery in a noughties Long Island summer where friendship, waitressing and a buried body collide. The hook is deliciously specific, with funny, heartfelt suspense and a sting of nostalgia.
- Book Synopsis
-
They said they’d never let a man get in the way of their friendship...
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.
A hilarious and heartfelt story about friendship, young women and bad men. Sarah Breen and Emer McLysaght bring their trademark Aisling humour in this completely new direction. Noughties nostalgia and a dead body, it’s the novel you didn’t know you needed.
Ideal for Readers Who…
- Loved the Aisling series — Our Deadly Summer is McLysaght and Breen's first novel outside the Aisling universe, and while the tone is darker and the setting is New York rather than Ballygobbard, the warmth, wit, and fierce female friendship that made Aisling a national treasure are entirely intact.
- Enjoy darkly comic Irish fiction with real emotional stakes — this isn't a cosy mystery. It's funny in the way that only Irish writers can be funny about serious things: sharply, affectionately, and with a body count.
- Feel a complicated nostalgia for the early noughties — dial-up internet, flip phones, impossibly low-cut jeans, and the particular madness of an Irish J1 summer in America. If you wore a velour tracksuit unironically, this book is for you.
- Love Marian Keyes, Holly Bourne, or Monica Heisey — fans of Really Good, Actually and So Happy for You will find the same blend of comedy and emotional honesty here, grounded in the specific texture of Irish women's lives.
- Are drawn to stories where female friendship is the beating heart — Laura and Dee's relationship is the real mystery at the centre of the novel. How two best friends end up standing over a body together, and what that does to them, is the story Our Deadly Summer is actually telling.
- Want a thriller that moves — set across Dublin, Long Island, and New York, with a plot that opens on a buried body and never fully lets you breathe, this is the rare book that earns its "unputdownable" without having to say it on the cover.
- About The Author
- Emer McLysaght is the former editor of The Daily Edge and has worked extensively in journalism and radio.
- Product Details
-
- ISBN
- 9781526692177
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury, (21 May 2026)
- Number of Pages
- 384
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 234 x 153 mm
- Categories: