Author: Nancy Thayer
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Ballentine Books
Publication Date: May 4, 2020
Book Description: Eleanor Sunderland loves living on Nantucket, in a gorgeous cliffside home that has been in her family for decades. Yet this year she can’t help but feel a bit isolated, even as the island begins to come alive with summer tourists and travelers. Her best friend has skipped town on a last-minute cruise, leaving Eleanor feeling lonely and nostalgic about her family’s weekend trips to the island, made less frequently in the years since her husband’s passing. Now, her money-driven children contact her mostly to complain and to beg her to sell her beloved home for a steep payout. Hoping to kick the season off on a good note, Eleanor decides her seventieth birthday may be the perfect occasion for a much-needed reunion.
Fresh off the heels of her college graduation, Eleanor’s dear granddaughter, Ari, has just ended an engagement that felt less like true love and more like a chore. She longs for a change of scenery and to venture far from her parents’ snobbish expectations. Taking advantage of her newfound freedom, she heads to Nantucket to clear her head before graduate school, moving in with her grandmother and taking a job at the local beach camp. As she watches Eleanor begin to form a bond with an old acquaintance, Ari herself becomes completely smitten with a friend’s charming older brother. But just as grandmother and granddaughter fall into a carefree routine, a few shocking discoveries throw them off course, and their ideas of the future seem suddenly uncertain.
Eleanor and Ari make exciting connections, old and new, over the course of an unpredictable, life-changing few months, and learn to lean on each other through every new challenge they face in life and love, in this tale filled with Nancy Thayer’s signature Nantucket magic.
Rating: 4 Stars
Review: As summer approaches the beach reads are coming in full force by our favorite authors. It is not summer without Nancy Thayer in the mix. A story of generations that will leave you smiling at the end.
Eleanor Sunderland is the matriarch of her family. Her children Alicia and Cliff want her to sell her grand house for very different reasons. Alicia’s daughter, Ari, who recently graduated from college asks to move in with Eleanor over the summer before she leaves to go to graduate school.
This book centers around Ari and Eleanor’s summer. One in the twilight of her life and the other just starting out. As with any Thayer novel there is lots of romance, complications and everything in between. There is not a lot of substance to this book, however I just find these types of books wonderful. This is coming upon my favorite time of year, every time you close a book you have a happy ending that leaves you smiling.
Thank you NetGalley and Ballentine Books for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Obsessed Bookaholic 