Summer on Sag Harbor
A Novel
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4.3 • 115 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The View cohost and three-time Emmy Award winner Sunny Hostin spirits readers away to the warm beaches of Sag Harbor in the second novel of her bestselling Summer series.
Olivia Jones, hard-working and accomplished, has, against the odds, blazed an enviable career path in the finance world. But behind the veneer of her success, she is mourning several devastating losses and betrayals. Untethered from her life in New York City, Olivia moves to a summer home in The Hamptons.
Here, Olivia finds a close-knit community of African American elites who escape New York City for the beautiful beaches of the Hamptons. Since the 1930s, very few have known about this Historically Black Beachfront Community, and the residents like it that way.
That is, until real estate developers discover the hidden gem. And now, the residents must fight for the soul of this HBBC.
As the summer stretches on, Olivia teams up with her new friends to protect their community and, in doing so, discovers who she really is. Though not without cost, Olivia’s search for her authentic identity and her fight to preserve her new Black utopia, will lead her to redefine the meaning of love, friendship, community, and family—and restore her faith in herself and her chosen path.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Hostin's uneven latest (after Summer on the Bluffs), a 20-something woman inherits a house from her godfather in Sag Harbor Hills, N.Y., a historically Black community in the Hamptons. Olivia Jones, an analyst for Goldman Sachs, longs to learn more about her father, Chris, who died when she was a baby. She gets the chance after Omar Tanner wills her the Eastern Long Island property Chris visited in the summer as a child. Joel Whittingham, the community's unofficial mayor, knew Chris and welcomes Olivia, as do a busybody neighbor and a goodhearted real estate agent who's passionate about blocking a predatory developer, ASK Properties, from gentrifying the area. Around these accepting new friends, all of whom are Black, the dark-skinned Olivia comes to terms with the colorism she dealt with while growing up. At the same time, she feels ashamed by her fiancé, Anderson Edwards, an aspiring comedian and TV writer, who is white, because of his need to support himself with food delivery work, and she explores a mutual attraction with another neighbor. Hostin's strengths lie in depicting the community's joyous camaraderie, but the plot tips into unnecessary melodrama with revelations about Chris and far-fetched connections between Anderson and ASK. This is charming and frustrating in equal measure.
Customer Reviews
Better but Unfinished
While Sunny gave us more drama and less name drops, which I absolutely appreciated, I felt like there were so many storylines and none of them were finished. Each storyline could have been its own book, the abandoning mother saga of Bea, Ama, and Billie; the love triangle between Olivia, Garret, and Anderson; Anderson and his mafia affiliated family and their gentrification of Sag Harbor; Olivia and her search for family and uncovering family secrets. It was a lot going on, especially with the Sag Harbor characters and their little storylines too. I’m looking for just one complete story. They say third time’s a charm, so maybe it will come together in next novel!