Author: Brenda Novak
Pages: 400
Publisher: Harlequin - Mira
Release Date: 7th May 2020
Genre: Women's Fiction
Format: Kindle
Good Reads Synopsis
Some families we’re born into
Some we find for ourselves
When Serenity Alston swabbed her cheek for 23andMe, she joked about uncovering some dark ancestral scandal. The last thing she expected was to discover two half sisters she didn’t know existed. Suddenly, everything about her loving family is drawn into question. And meeting these newfound sisters might be the only way to get answers.
The women decide to dig into the mystery together at Serenity’s family cabin in Lake Tahoe. With Reagan navigating romantic politics at work and Lorelei staring down the collapse of her marriage, all three women are converging at a crossroads in their lives. Before the summer is over, they’ll have to confront the past and determine how to move forward when everything they previously thought to be true was a lie. But any future is easier to face with family by your side.
My Review of One Perfect Summer
It has an interesting premise, and the story leaned heavily on the sisters' mysterious beginning. I loved how we learned about each of the sisters gradually, but towards the end extra pieces of information were added almost as a second thought, as if the author forgot to mention them earlier. As for the resolution to the mystery of the sisters' connection, only in the literally last 5% of the novel do we find out how they are related, and even that as a rushed, almost thrown in solution.
The ending, yes, is unexpected and I wouldn't have guessed it, but maybe less build-up, and more telling how they coped with what they found out. There was a lot, and I mean, a lot of information thrown in my face in the last few pages, coming from an unexpected source, and I needed time to process it all, but alas! I had no time because the novel ended. Funny enough, one of the characters is an author and she says at some point that the ending always goes faster than the beginning. This applies to this novel as well, because by the 90% mark it seemed the author was ready to wrap up this novel. That must have been a bit tricky because it touched up on a lot of heavy topics, some put there as if to cover all mandatory points in a novel. Hence the unbelievable ending.
I knew I was reading a women's story when all the men were described as good looking, the perfect height so their female love interst could rest their pretty head on their broad chest (I'm paraphrasing here). Speaking of love interests, I am glad not all three sisters ended up in a perfectly tied romantic relationship; this keeps things more reality-grounded. There are the expected cliches in a novel in this genre, but in times of global pandemics, I knew this was what I wanted, so no judging here.
Overall it's an engaging story, albeit a tad too many characters. I think we could have done without all three brothers next door, and maybe the novel as a whole could have been about 50 pages shorter. It's a light novel, with some depth; in a word, a feel-good novel.
I received a free e-book copy of this novel from the publisher via Net Galley. All thoughts expressed here are my own.
List of characters for One Perfect Summer (contains spoilers!)
Serenity {S.} Alston - 35 years old, true crime writer
Sean Alston - ex-husband, in prison because of child pornography
Sawyer - Sean's step-brother, was in the military. Becomes romantically involved with Serenity
Beau - S's 25 y/o brother. gay, will marry Trevor
Tara and Tia - S's twin sisters, 28 y/o, live in San Antonio
Chuck and Charlotte Currington - S's parents
Uncle Vance - Chuck's brother. Has worked at an adoption agency many years before
Chuck is the one to give S a newspaper clipping that'll uncover the mystery
S. spends the summer with R. and L. at her parents' cabin near Lake Tahoe
Lorelei {L.} Cipriano - knows nothing about her biological parents, was in foster care all her life
Osha and Mercedes - in foster care with L, they keep in touch
Mark - Lorelei's husband. Has an affair with Francine
Francine - Lorelei's best sister. pregnant with Mark's child
Allen - Francine's ex-husband, have been separated for 6 months
Lucy - Mark and Lorelei's 4 y/o daughter
Reagan {R.} Sands - creative director in New York at Edison & Curry
Rosalind - R's mother, a fashion designer
Stuart Sands - R's father, died when she was 2 y/o
Rally McKnight - architect, becomes romantically involved with R.. He has a teenaged son. Rally has owned an architecture company for 20 years. He's divorced, in his 40s.
Drew - work colleague of R's. Have a one time affair, she becomes pregnant. She keeps the child, a girl, he gives up his paternal rights
Sally - Drew's wife. They have 3 kids together
Finley {Finn} Hatch - neighbour at the cabin. becomes romantically involved with Lorelei
Nolan - Finn's brother
Davis - Finn's brother, has lost an arm in a motorcycle accident
Michelle - Finn's on and off girlfriend
The girls are connected though their father who was a priest and had relations with underage girls. All three girls were adopted.
L's parents divorced after she was adopted, but her mother was killed soon after, that's how L was never claimed by anyone and ended up in foster care.
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