Not every thriller is thrilling. The Summer We Buried is not Jody Gehrman’s first rodeo, but it does not exactly speak to a deft handle on her material. If you want nearly everything laid out for you in advance, The Summer We Buried may be rewarding – otherwise you can tell you don’t need to dig it up at a mere glance.

Tansy is a guidance counsellor at a college. Selene, a friend that she hasn’t seen in seventeen years, tells Tansy that she must try to convince a student – Selene’s own daughter Jupiter – to break up with her seemingly abusive boyfriend, or the truth of seventeen years ago will be revealed.

That summary is the proper vagueness that you want from a blurb. If you read The Summer We Buried, you will find out what happened on that fateful summer eve almost instantly. Where other contemporary authors might drip feed the events of the past, interspersed through a novel either in alternating chapters, or gradual revelations through dialogue, Gehrman plays her hand at the very first opportunity. The power of blackmail is that you can’t reveal the terms to anyone lest you get exposed; Tansy shares her secret so widely that it’s amazing that Selene has any power over her at all.

Later revelations stretch the bounds of credulity, making one wonder how Selene and Jupiter had managed to function in society in the years prior to Tansy’s reappearance in their lives.

With a cavalier endgame that suggests that the criminality of every crime is relative, The Summer We Buried collapses into its own ridiculousness. A thoroughly unsympathetic cast of characters and a near terminally foolish narrator make The Summer We Buried an eminently forgettable novel – degrees of sameness do not matter if it’s a good version of the same, but The Summer We Buried synthesises none of the good and leaves only the ashen remains of a thriller’s bones.

An ARC of The Summer We Buried was provided by Crooked Lane Books in exchange for review.