The Perfect Summer
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4.5 • 34 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Old friendships--and love--make all things new again.
The acclaimed author of Safe Harbor and other New York Times bestsellers returns to the seaside, delving into the heart of a once happy family facing troubled waters.
Bay McCabe relishes life’s simple pleasures, her children, her home by the sea. She has never forgotten the values of her Irish granny--the everyday happiness of family, good friends, and hard work. Bay and her husband, Sean, have weathered rough spells and moved on. Now a perfect summer, filled with the scent of beach roses, lies before them.
Charming and ambitious, Sean splits his energy between the town bank, his old fishing boat, and the family he seems to adore--until he leaves his young daughter stranded after school. As troubling memories resurface, a phone call confirms that Sean is missing. So begins a season that will change everything. As the door to all Bay cherishes seems to close forever, another opens, and an old love steps through. Embraced by enduring friendships, Bay will discover the truth of who she is--what love is--and how life’s deepest mysteries are often those closest to home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heartwarming and assured, Rice's latest novel (after The Secret Hour) addresses timeless themes and will linger with readers long after the reading is done. For years, Bay McCabe has kept her family together despite her husband's unfaithfulness. When Sean disappears one afternoon, she discovers that he has embezzled money from many in their small seaside town. Suddenly, Bay and her three children are besieged by the press, isolated from their community and broke. The eventual discovery of Sean's dead body raises larger questions like why he stole, who helped him and whether he might have been murdered. One clue reconnects Bay with widower Daniel Connolly, a boat builder with whom she shared a teenage attraction. As solid as Sean was slick, Daniel rekindles Bay's affections even as his troubled daughter Eliza helps Bay's daughter Annie cope with the summer's horrors. But when it turns out that Danny's late wife may have been entangled with Sean, their tenuous tie threatens to break. Rich with scenic settings and colorful characters, this is a beautifully crafted novel despite some 11th-hour plot contrivances. Rice's ability to evoke the lyricism of the seaside lifestyle without over-sentimentalizing contemporary issues like adultery, anorexia or white-collar crime is just one of the many gifts that make this a perfect summer read.
