Summer Hours by Alessandra Thom

Summer Hours by Alessandra Thom

'Everything about this book is alive' – Maria Sledmere

It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin’s life is stagnating. She spends her days cancelling plans, skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with her best friend Eve.

When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of ‘freelance work,’ Roisin thinks her luck might finally be changing. But Claire’s proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line to avoid losing what matters to her most.

'It’s a propulsive story, set in Edinburgh, and Thom is a writer of rare talent'

* Gutter Magazine *

'A novel that packs a real punch, Summer Hours is such an eloquent an evocative read that you can feel the heat coming off the page, and taste that warm wine'

* SNACK Magazine *

'Thom displays great skill in tangling her characters up in a fascinating knot of relationships - some sexual, some platonic, some hovering in the deliciously ambiguous no-man's land in between.. Thom's Tardis-like debut novel makes an outsize impression'

-- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *

 'a sizzling story of what happens when the lines of friendship are blurred

* The List - shortlisted for the Best rising Scottish author award *

'A spry tale of friendship and desire, best inhaled in a single sitting. Summer Hours is astute, funny, and fizzing with life'

-- Malachy Tallack

'Alessandra’s writing is both vivid and compelling, combining raconteurial warmth with sharpness, poise and an enviable instinct for rhythm. Whether its subject is family legacy and memory or the precarities of young adulthood, this is writing attuned – apparently effortlessly – to both atmospheric subtleties and the timeless antagonisms of intimacy'

-- Daisy Lafarge

'Everything about this book is alive. I inhaled it'

-- Maria Sledmere, author and critic

'Thom perfectly summons up a sultry and stultifying summer that threatens to utterly derail her protagonist. Gulp it down with a cool drink at hand'

-- Lynsey May

'the most compelling read.... a brilliant coming of age novel, beautifully written and sensitively presented'

-- Ken Lussey * Undiscovered Scotland *

'A beautiful, sweaty, sticky, heat wave of a novel'

-- Jodie Matthews, author of Meet Me at the Surface

'a vital and vivid examination of life in the modern world,'

* SNACK Magazine, 10 Books for 2025 *

'A love triangle of three women in an Edinburgh heatwave, Summer Hours explores the power-struggles of money, friendship, and desire'

* LoveReading *

'A captivating read'

* Scottish Field *

'Alessandra Thom beings a fresh and unique voice to this evocative read. Filled with wit, humour and insight, Summer Hours is a vivid and compelling read, perfect for fans of Sally Rooney and Julia Armfield'

* Scots Magazine, August Book of the Month *

'A sizzling debut'

* Sunday Post *

'Thom writes with precision and tenderness in equal measure—a formidable combination . . . The novel pulses with the anxieties of our precarious age: housing instability, wealth disparity, the weight of familial expectation, the vertiginous uncertainty of young queer life'

-- Eric Page * Scene Magazine *

Alessandra Thom is a writer from Aberdeenshire. She was a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee for Prose in 2023 and the second-place runner-up in the Short Fiction International Short Story Prize 2024. Her short fiction has appeared in Gutter. Summer Hours is her first novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781846977428
ISBN 10	1846977428
Title	Summer Hours
Author	Alessandra Thom
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Birlinn General
Year published	2026-07-02
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.