The Summer of Broken Rules
K.L. Walther's The Summer of Broken Rules, published in 2021, is a tender, swoony YA romance set across a single chaotic week of a Martha's Vineyard family wedding. Meredith Fox has not really been herself since the death of her older sister Claire eighteen months ago. She has drifted away from her cousin and best friend Sarah, retreated from her parents, and approached the wedding she now has to attend, Sarah's wedding, with dread. The Foxes have a longstanding tradition of playing Assassin during big family events, and Meredith's only plan is to win it for Claire, who never lost. When she arrives on the island and meets Wit Anderson, the groom's lanky, easygoing cousin, the rules of her shut-down summer start to bend. Wit is a fellow contestant, a willing partner-in-crime, and exactly the kind of person Meredith has been keeping at arm's length. Walther threads first love, family pressure, and the surprising gentleness of grief through a week of beach bonfires, capture-the-flag scheming, and slow honest conversations on the rooftop after midnight. The Summer of Broken Rules became a TikTok favorite for good reason: it is warm, smart, and willing to take the joy of a teenage summer seriously.
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Eighteen-year-old Meredith Fox heads to her cousin's wedding week on Martha's Vineyard a year after losing her older sister Claire. Across seven days of beach picnics and rehearsal dinners, Meredith is paired with the bride's New Hampshire cousin Wit Brennan in the family's old game of Assassin.
Yes. The Summer of Broken Rules is YA contemporary romance, suitable for readers 13 and up. It contains clean romance with no explicit content, set against a Martha's Vineyard wedding week and a family-wide game of capture the flag.
Yes. The Summer of Broken Rules is a standalone novel by K.L. Walther, with no sequels planned. Walther has written other YA romances set in similar warm, atmospheric settings.
No. The Summer of Broken Rules is a clean YA romance with no explicit scenes. Most of the romance unfolds through tension and conversation rather than physical content.
The Summer of Broken Rules deals with grief and the death of a sibling as a backdrop to the main romance. Some readers may find these themes heavy. There is no graphic content otherwise.
The Summer of Broken Rules was written by K.L. Walther, published in 2021 by Sourcebooks Fire.
The Summer of Broken Rules is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Summer of Broken Rules takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Summer of Broken Rules is a standalone novel by K.L. Walther, not part of a series.
The Summer of Broken Rules is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
