Title: Kakigori Summer

Author: Emily Itami

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Phoenix Books

Publication Date: 19th June 2025

Rating: 5/5

Cover:

Summary:

Sisters Rei, Kiki and Ai have always had to look out for one another – but life has taken them on very different paths. 

Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting herself with an all-consuming job at a financial corporation in London. 

Big-hearted Kiki is a single mother in Tokyo, juggling the demands of her young son and the cantankerous elderly residents of the retirement home she works in. 

The free-spirited youngest, Ai , is a Japanese pop idol who has found fame and fortune but lost herself along the way. When Ai is embroiled in a scandal and thrust into the spotlight, Rei must pick up the pieces of her family once more.

Over the course of a summer in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters reunite with their sharp-tongued grandmother, entertain Kiki’s irrepressible son and silently worry about Ai, carefully avoiding the subject of their mother’s death fifteen years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long . . .

Review:

First off, how absolutely beautiful is that cover?! Happily – I can confirm that what’s inside the book is just as beautiful. Kakigori Summer is a book about three sisters, Rei, Kiki and Ai, who end up spending the summer at their childhood home after a scandal involving Ai (a Japanese pop idol) hits the news. This is not a book full of action, it is much more about the characters and about finding yourself and your own peace. The writing is stunning – bringing rural Japan in the summertime to life in brilliant technicolour and perfectly characterising the sisterly relationship in all its complicated glory. Itami writes with a warmth and poignancy that had me noting down loads of quotes in my notebook. From the very beginning I was completely invested in these characters and wanted the best for them. 

The three sisters are quite different but I genuinely liked all three and felt a connection to them and to their relationship with each other. The story covers some heavy topics like mental health, family issues, grief, loss and motherhood and yet Itami has an elegant lightness of touch which makes the narrative full of depth yet not depressing at all. Kakigori Summer is an absolute gem of a book about family, love, relationships and how to live authentically with yourself. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. 

★★★★★

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and the publisher for my place on this tour and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

Buy the book:

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