Last Summer (of You and Me) (Brashares)

Book Reviews
Despite its serious themes The Last Summer (of You and Me) is full of optimism and too neatly resolved. But it's steeped in the familiar longings for lost time that readers seeking the carefree pleasures of a summer will enjoy.
Kim Edwards - Washington Post

The Last Summer is as much a treatise on loyalty and letting go of childish ways as it is on a summer of love.
USA Today

Vivid elegy for youth...Brashares is wise as well as sentimental. She sagely remembers just how it feels to be young, lost, and in love. The Last Summer (of You and Me) is a weeper: If you don't grow misty there's something a bit shifty about the state of your heart.
Miami Herald

When summertime neighbors Alice and Paul realize their feelings for go deeper than friendshipm they're afraid to share the news of their clandestine affair with Riley, Alice's sister and Paul's best friend. But then a darker, more tragic secret threatens to come between them. The page-turning pace of Ann Brashares's The Last Summer (of You & Me) makes it a perfect beach read.
Redbook

[A] treacly tale about the tribulations a trio of longtime friends encounter.... Brashares's YA roots are on display: the girls and Paul act like high school kids...and anything below the surface is left untouched. It's a beach read, for sure, but a mediocre one.
Publishers Weekly

A novel about sisters, friendship, irrevocable loss, blossoming love, old betrayals and secrets.... Brashares writes with a spare hand about the evolving ties between Paul and the sisters.... But the characters, although likeable, never really come alive, and neither does the novel. Slow-moving, deliberately paced coming-of-age tale oddly lacking in passion, though a built-in readership will undoubtedly want to read it anyway.
Kirkus Reviews