The Summer that Melted Everything

Tiffany McDaniel

2016 • 320 pages

Ratings21

Average rating4.1

Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heatwave scorched the small town of Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil.

When local prosecutor Autopsy Bliss publishes an invitation to the devil to come to the country town of Breathed, Ohio, nobody quite expected that he would turn up. They especially didn't expect him to turn up a tattered and bruised thirteen-year-old boy.

Fielding, the son of Autopsy, finds the boy outside the courthouse and brings him home, and he is welcomed into the Bliss family. The Blisses believe the boy, who calls himself Sal, is a runaway from a nearby farm town. Then, as a series of strange incidents implicate Sal — and riled by the feverish heatwave baking the town from the inside out — there are some around town who start to believe that maybe Sal is exactly who he claims to be.

But whether he's a traumatised child or the devil incarnate, Sal is certainly one strange fruit: he talks in riddles, his uncanny knowledge and understanding reaches far outside the realm of a normal child — and ultimately his eerily affecting stories of Heaven, Hell, and earth will mesmerise and enflame the entire town.

Devastatingly beautiful, The Summer That Melted Everything is a captivating story about community, redemption, and the dark places where evil really lies.

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Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

rogier caprino

???It was a heat that didn???t just melt tangible things like ice, chocolate, Popsicles. It melted all the intangibles too. Fear, faith, anger, and those long-trusted templates of common sense. It melted lives as well, leaving futures to be slung with the dirt of the gravedigger???s shovel.???

Summer has lots to offer. It depends were you life what will be. Summer should be a fun time with family and friends. The summer of ‘84 in Breathed, Ohio is different. Attorney Autopsy Bliss is the cause of it. He invites mr morningstar in a sarcastic manner after a chase did not go as he wished. His request has been answered. It's a shock because were a cloven hoofed biblical figure should be a thirteen year old black kid with the oddest green eyes shows up claiming to be the devil himself. The authorities can't find his family looking for him and he ends up staying with Fielding Bliss and his family. Fielding Bliss is the narrator and tells his story summer of 1984 story somewhere in the future as an older man.

Tiffany McDaniel's debut is shelved on goodreads as a magical realism adult novel. The magical realism aspect for me at least is in the setting. I love how Breathed, Ohio breathed heavily as if it was out of breath of the heat. Haha, a pun. The book shows characters that have monstrous capabilities. The citizens display how mob mentality happens. Racism, homophobia, fear of AIDS, agoraphobia, child abuse and religion are shown not heavy handed and are done in a non preachy way. This book has brought me out of an reading slump. A 6-month reading slump, the agony. McDaniel's writing is amazing. Although it it hit me hard emotionally i'm glad i had the chance to read. I will definitely re-read it in the future. I can't wait to see what will be next.

July 23, 2016

egg

The devil turned up
finally, someone to blame
he seemed so harmless.

January 21, 2017

natasa

elkezdtem, föladtam, beleolvastam az áradozó kritikákba, újra megpróbálkoztam vele, aztán némi szenvedés után eszembe jutott az a cikk, amibe a seveneves olvasásának idején botlottam, és amiből megtudtam, hogy ez a hosszas leírásoktól hemzsegő stílus nem az én agyamnak való, aztán megnyugodtam, hogy nem vagyok én rossz ember és végleg lemondtam róla.

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