THE SUMMER OF STARTING OVER

Carlisle offers a sweet, slow-burn romance between a singer and a homebuilder, set in a Florida beach town.

Country-singer-turned-popstar Callie Jackson is on the brink of career failure. Her last album flopped, her record label went under, she has songwriter’s block, and she just broke up with her producer boyfriend, Andrew Walker.She returns to her (fictional) hometown of Big Dune Island, Florida, to clear out her deteriorating childhood home, which has been sold, but her painful past threatens to overwhelm her. She hasn’t been able to enter the house in the nine years since her parents’ sudden, traumatic death in a car accident and is understandably surprised to find her childhood sweetheart, Jesse Thomas, doing repairs on the building. She left Jesse behind after she signed with a record labe lat 16, and he never got over it. He took over his father’s failing construction business soon after Callie left. His investors insist on building new developments, but his heart is in renewing the island’s heritage houses; he purchased Callie’s house hoping to convince them to take a gamble on renovation—and now, seeing Callie again is causing a lot of feelings to resurface. Carlisle’s winsome summer romance offers vivid characters and a beautifully described beach setting (“Sea oats danced in sync across the dunes as if an invisible conductor were directing a silent symphony”) in a story told from Jesse’s and Callie’s alternating third-person perspectives. The lingering feelings between the protagonists is palpable, and the personal and professional demands that conflict with their desires enrich the narrative. Themes of identity, grief, and loss add further depth. For Callie, returning home reminds her of her roots as a country singer and the joy in her work that’s been missing; for Jesse, what started as a restoration becomes a passion project as he sees the Callie he once knew re-emerge. The story of the pair’s sweet teenage relationship, interwoven throughout, makes for engaging reading, despite a few awkward transitions between the present and past.

A charming second-chance summer love story.