2014 Summer Beach Reads

SPOILER ALERT!

Summertime is a time for some lazy reading... you know, those light romances that take place in or near wonderful beach places like Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Outer Banks, the low country (aka Tidewater region of Virginia, NC, Charleston, or along the coast of Maine. Summer 2014 was no different, and I returned to two of my favorite authors looking for some enjoyable beach reading. I've always enjoyed Dorothea Benton Frank's books because they're set around Charleston, one of my very favorite cities! Ditto with Elin Hildebrand who usually sets her stories on Nantucket. Alas, these two summer reads were mediocre at best.

Bulls Island is the story of yet another homecoming-- a local girl who leaves town and makes in big in the world on her own. At the beginning of the story she's found as a very successful executive in New York City with private planes at her disposal. her company decides to embark on a real estate development project on Bulls Island, South Carolina, and she's put in charge because of her knowledge from the area. Her anxiety rises as she knows this will force her to confront people from her past, including an old romantic love. In the meantime, she also messes around with a rough mafia gangster, and this is where I had trouble with the plausibility of the plot and Betts (the main character). As the plot comes to an end, I kept wondering how Benton Franks was going to resolve this issue with Vinnie (the gangster). Just as I thought she had forgotten about him, he surfaces but in an uncharacteristic way. Benton Franks resolves the Vinnie character, but it was somewhat lame, and just seemed out of place with the rest of the story. I give this book a 2 out of 5 stars (with 5 being the highest) because I don't think that Benton Franks developed her main character in accordance with the character's attributes as described earlier in the book, the unfolding plot seems to stall near the end, and the resolution of the Vinnie character is out of place.

A Summer Affair is just plain unsatisfying. This is the story of  red-haired and freckled Claire, a glassblowing artist, mother of four young children, and wife to Jason, a rugged, and somewhat sexist, kind of guy. She's asked to chair a local charity event, and begins an affair with the charity event's executive director. It was just hard for me to like, or feel sympathetic, to a character who is the mother of four small children who commits adultery. I know this sounds judgmental, but really? Where did she think this affair was going to go? The plot is complete with Claire facing her choices, dealing with a boorish husband, rebuilding connections with a high school sweetheart who has now become a rock star, and realizing that she needs to end her affair. I skimmed over many of the pages in this book because it just wasn't worth the time in reading in detail. I give this book a 2 out of 5 stars because it was dull. Hildebrand has done much better in other books.

Light Summer Reading Fare

It's time to update my reading list, and share my reviews of books I've been reading... This summer I started with a few "beachy" type books-- usually set on the shores of North Carolina's Outer Banks or somewhere near Cape Cod, Nantucket, or Martha's Vinyard. Summer Rental was a fun book to read- after all, who wouldn't want to identify with an attractive 40-something career woman seeking love? Tis story takes place in North Carolina's Outer Banks, although I have to admit at first that I was puzzled as to why the characters in this book would want to rent a beach house on the Outer Banks in August. That is a fine season for northern beaches such as Cape Cod and the outlying islands, but the beach in North Carolina in August is awful-- talk about hot and humid!!! This is the time to avoid the beach there, but oh well. the characters in this little novel were likeable and fun. The plot revolves around 4 women in a beach house and a good looking unattached landlord with financial troubles. Need I say more? It's a light read and allowed the mind to wander through beach scenes from my past... all good stuff.

I chose this second beachy-book, Nantucket Nights, because last summer I read Barefoot by Elin Hildebrand and I liked it. This one was a bit less satisfying... the plot line is complex enough to keep readers interested, but the end of the book appeared to be somewhat artificially constructed; almost as if the author didn't know how to end it and so put this ending together after consulting over wine with friends. The book starts out well enough with the main character, Kayla, a wife and mother who wound up making Nan tucket her home after college, not wanting to respond to a voicemail on her phone. The story backtracks from there as you learn more about the characters-- 3 women who shared a summer rental right after college, and how their lives entwined so that they each wound up living on Nantucket and making there lives there. The story line is complex enough to keep readers interested, and the descriptions of Nantucket made me long to hop on the ferry and spend a summer in a clapboard summer rental myself. However, the ending is not one to my liking, and I did think it really didn't fit with the book. Read it yourself and let me know what you think. Happy Reading!

Barefoot by Elin Hildebrand

Yesterday I did something I can't remember ever having done before-- I opened a new book to read at 4PM and finished it by midnight!

I seldom read novels, preferring instead the nitty gritty of stories drawn from "real life." However, this novel was a fun, light read- although the story of one of the heroines struggling with chemo treatments was a bit heavy-- but just imagining a summer on Nantucket was what I needed amid all this cold and snow!

The ending of the story was less satisfying. The young Nantucket man who saved the day by becoming the family's babysitter for two little boys, in the end seemed cast off with a paycheck and a great big "Thanks- we couldn't have done it without you" spiel. From a conflict perspective-- the ending pointed out class differences; from a structural-functionalist perspective-- the ending simply ended; and from a symbolic-interactionist perspective-- the ending showed how each character, in a different stage of life, placed meaning in his or her summer experiences.