Akemi Dawn Bowman

“A lyrical novel about grief, love, and finding oneself in the wake of a tragic loss.” —Bustle “Gorgeous prose and heartbreaking storytelling.” —Paste Magazine “Grabs your heart and won’t let go.” —Book Riot A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Three starred reviews for this stunning novel about a mixed-race teen who struggles to find her way back to her love of music in the wake of her sister’s death, from the author of the William C. Morris Award finalist Starfish. Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea. Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish. Aching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible.

Summer Bird Blue

I hate that understanding myself isn’t as simple as doing a Google search on what I’m feeling. I hate that one moment I think I know who I am, and then the next moment I’m second-guessing myself and feeling like a fraud.

And I know Aunty Ani’s wrong. There aren’t enough windows in the world I could break to make me feel better.

But I’ll try not to break them if it means protecting my hands.

I don’t know what I’m looking for in love. I don’t even think I’m looking for love at all. I don’t see people and feel that rush of excitement Lea always described when she had a crush—the kind of excitement that leads to touching and kissing and whatever else. I just see people that might make good friends, and I’ve always been okay with that.

I don’t really know how to explain it. I don’t have the vocabulary for it, which is why labels scare me. But I know I don’t look at people that way. And labels make me feel so much pressure to know things about me that I just haven’t figured out yet.

I think you’re less confused than you think you are. You just need to learn how to trust yourself.

I told him I don’t know what it means to want to be around someone all the time but never want to be intimate. I told him I don’t know what it means to want a best friend that won’t date anyone else.

I hate that I feel jealous of them. Not because of what they have together, but because of what I’m not a part of anymore. 

Summer Bird Blue quotes

Join the club