For many readers, summer is a time for spending weekends in the sun, catching up on all the books in their to-be-read piles. And, as beach-read enthusiasts know, it’s also a season when a great many protagonists find love. Here are three such tales, all recommended by Kirkus Indie, about people falling for each other as temperatures rise:
In Savannah Carlisle’s The Summer of Starting Over, country-pop star Callie Jackson has been experiencing career troubles in her late 20s, including a failed record label, writer’s block, and a breakup with her producer boyfriend. She returns to her beachside Florida hometown to clear out her childhood home, which her uncle recently sold. Her parents died in an accident nine years ago, and she hasn’t been inside the house since. She finds her high school sweetheart, Jesse Thomas, working on the house, and she can’t help but notice the “rippling muscles under his tight t-shirt”; it turns out that he bought the historic home and aims to renovate it. They broke up 13 years ago, after she’d signed a record contract and he’d stayed in town to help save his dad’s construction business. As old feelings resurface, they each find the strength to pursue what’s most important to them. Our reviewer calls the novel “a charming second-chance summer love story.”
The Summer Husband by Amy Lorowitz tells the story of 39-year-old New Yorker Lori Kramer, who’s taken a new position as the division leader at Camp Woodlands, where she’ll be staying for the summer with her two young daughters. With her troubled marriage falling apart, it’s also a time to take stock of her life. Almost immediately upon arrival, she meets Ted Mooney, the British assistant director of the boys’ camp, whom she describes as a “charming rogue.” Lori slowly adjusts to her new surroundings and responsibilities (it’s her first time at a sleepaway camp), and things get complicated when, as our reviewer puts it, she has “an unexpected emotional connection” with Ted “that unsettles her sense of responsibility and self-control.” The reviewer calls the novel “a perceptive, emotionally grounded portrait of a woman confronting desire and self-definition.”
Jenny Hale’s The Summer Hideaway finds its protagonist pursuing a dream in a sun-drenched beach town. Alice Emerson, a 20-something single mom from Virginia with a 6-year-old son, inherits her grandfather’s bicycle shop in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; there, she decides to pursue her dream of opening an ice cream shop with her best pal, Sasha. Alice is dealing with her heartbreak over a months-old breakup with her unfaithful long-term boyfriend. Before long, though, she runs into attractive hospital intern Jack Murphy, her summer crush back when they were teens. Maybe, Sasha observes, “meeting Jack could be a sign that there are good people out there.” But as Alice and Jack’s relationship deepens, it’s complicated by the fact that he’s about to leave for a multiyear hospital residency in Chicago. “In true romance fashion, loose ends tie up in a heartwarming manner,” notes Kirkus’ reviewer, who calls the novel “as satisfying as ice cream on the beach.”
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
