Farewell, Nantucket

We’ve reached the autumnal equinox and the official end of summer, but you can keep the sand between your toes with these Beach Reads.

Swan Song     Elin Hilderbrand     (2024)

With this appropriately named romance novel, the rock-star author Elin Hilderbrand is ending her series set on the island of Nantucket. Hilderbrand says that she’s run out of plot ideas for her characters, but she doesn’t close the door totally on possible future Nantucket tales. Meanwhile, Swan Song tells the story of the final case taken on by retiring police chief Ed Kapenash. The $22-million home of island newcomers Bull and Leslee Richardson has burned to the ground, and Coco Coyle, personal assistant to the Richardsons, is missing and is suspected of the arson. In lengthy flashbacks, we learn that Coco has been befriended by Ed’s daughter, Kacy, and is entangled with other islanders. Hilderbrand liberally peppers this mystery/romance narrative with her usual pop culture references to music, fashion, and cuisine. When she takes readers, for example, to an extravagant party at the Richardson’s mansion, she paints the scene expertly.

Nobody does a Beach Read like Hilderbrand, as I’ve noted in my reviews of several other offerings in her thirty-book Nantucket series. Here are recaps of some of those reviews.

The Five-Star Weekend     Elin Hilderbrand     (2023)  In this gossipy escapade, fifty-something Hollis Shaw gathers four friends (one from each phase of her life) for a weekend of companionship and gourmet dining, to help her move through her grief from the recent death of her husband. All the friends have their own back stories and secrets, and their lives have intersected with Hollis’s life in surprising ways. As usual, prepare to be inundated with references to designer clothes, fine wines, and Nantucket restaurants.

28 Summers    Erin Hilderbrand (2020)  For chick lit escapism, it doesn’t get better than this Hilderbrand novel, which borrows its structure from Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year. Two lovers meet secretly each summer, starting in 1993, on Nantucket Island. You can take lots of breezy seaside vacations with them.

Summer of ’69     Elin Hilderbrand     (2019)  In the Author’s Note at the back of Summer of ’69, Elin Hilderbrand explains that she was born on July 17, 1969. Fifty years on, she revisits the momentous events of that summer, including in her fictional narrative such actual occurrences as the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick that derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes, the rock ‘n’ roll encampment at Woodstock, and the continuing slaughter of troops and civilians in Vietnam. Hilderbrand’s main characters are the Foley-Levin family, who summer on Nantucket. Blair, the eldest of the offspring, is recently married and discovers late in pregnancy that she’s carrying twins. Kirby, the rebel sister, takes a job on the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard, where she is almost a witness in the Kopechne/Kennedy case. Tiger, the only son, is off fighting in Vietnam, driving his mother to drink. And 13-year-old Jessie, the youngest, gets invited to Woodstock. Through the experiences of this family, Hilderbrand takes us back to 1969 in all its glory and horror. Some of the plot twists will be obvious to any avid reader of mystery novels, and a few anachronisms crop up. But, despite the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Summer of ’69 is mostly brisk and cheerful, with wrap-ups of most of the plot lines by the final pages. You can have that second margarita and still be able to follow the story.

Endless Summer     Elin Hilderbrand     (2022)  This collection of nine short prequels and sequels to several of Hilderbrand’s novels is for her diehard followers. Of special note are the sequel novellas, Summer of ’79 and Summer of ’89, that are included. These novellas follow the Foley-Levin clan ten years out and then twenty years out from the novel Summer of ’69, with emphasis on various romantic entanglements that play out in sometimes unexpected ways as the decades unfold. The pop culture references that Hilderbrand uses to set the decade can be heavy at times, but I love epilogues, and these two novellas are, in a way, highly extended epilogues.

If you need a novel set on a different island off the East Coast of the United States, hop over to Martha’s Vineyard:

The Lost Letters from Martha’s Vineyard     Michael Callahan     (2024)  This story toggles between 1959, when actor Mercy Welles disappears from Hollywood on the cusp of stardom, and 2018, when NYC television producer Kit O’Neill discovers some letters of her recently deceased grandmother. The mystery unfolds on Martha’s Vineyard in both time periods, and it’s a pretty good mystery, with a couple of romances for extra spice. (Callahan did need a better editor, though, who might have stopped him from using the word “ensconced” so many times.)

A Grab Bag of Recent Novels

Leaving     Roxana Robinson     (2024)  A man and a woman meet by chance at a performance of the opera Tosca in New York City. Sarah, retired and long divorced, volunteers in the art world. Warren, a practicing architect, is unhappily married. They were romantically involved nearly forty years before, when they were both in college, but have not seen each other since then. Flashes of remembrances and of possibilities ensue. Why did they break up? Were they really soulmates who should have been together all those years? Is there such a thing as “soulmates”? The personal and family complications that arise from their renewed liaison are presented in sensitive and devastating detail.

The Five-Star Weekend     Elin Hilderbrand     (2023)  Escape to the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Cape Cod, for another of Hilderbrand’s beach-based, gossipy escapades. This time, the recently widowed fifty-something Hollis Shaw gathers four friends (one from each phase of her life) for a weekend of companionship and gourmet dining, to help her move through her grief. All the friends have their own back stories and secrets, and their lives have intersected with Hollis’s life in surprising ways. I was inundated by the many references to designer clothes, pop music, fine wines, and Nantucket restaurants, but I still buzzed happily through this lightweight novel. I’ve reviewed a number of other Hilderbrand offerings, including 28 Summers, Summer of ’69, and Endless Summer.

Mercury     Amy Jo Burch     (2023)  Next, step into the rural western Pennsylvania town of Mercury in the 1990s and meet the Joseph family:

• Mick (patriarch, expert roofer, weirdo)

• Elise (matriarch, frustrated housewife)

• Sons Bay, Way, and Shay (I’m not making this up)

• Marley (who arrives in town as a teenager and becomes enmeshed in the lives of the Josephs)

The introspective musings of these characters can go on at length, but the family dynamics are fascinating, within a plot that takes many unexpected turns. There’s a subplot with Marley’s friend Jade, a dead body that causes lots of consternation, and a harrowing denouement. Questions that the novelist seems to be asking: Which family secrets do you keep and which do you reveal? What do you sacrifice as an individual to be part of a family? Where does love come in?

Breezy Beach Reads, Part 3

Just what is a Beach Read?

When I’ve posted before on this fiction sub-genre (here and here), I’ve characterized Beach Reads as novels that won’t demand much strenuous thought. A Beach Read is usually light on troubling themes about the state of the world; disasters can crop up, but a happy ending for at least some of the characters is required. The plot moves along quickly, and the pages seem to turn themselves, so that you still have time to gaze out at the body of water adjacent to your sandy perch. The setting for Beach Reads is often the summer, often at a tourist-attracting seaside town, but this setting is not mandatory.

The Beach Read reader is likely to be female. My informal sampling indicates that many men veer instead toward nonfiction for their vacation reading—maybe biography or social science or sports history. Perhaps because of its predominately female readership, the Beach Read is akin to the Chick Lit novel and the Reunion Romance, as well as to Hallmark Christmas/holiday movies. (For a great Reunion Romance, try Kate Eberlen’s Miss You.)

Certain authors excel at Beach Reads. Elin Hilderbrand really rises to the top, especially with her novels set on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. Hilderbrand’s Beach Reads are strong because she draws her characters with finesse and creates mostly plausible plot components. She carries some of her characters from book to book, following their life trajectories and encouraging her readers to pick up the next offering. Members of Hilderbrand’s fan club, the Hilderbabes, are seriously devoted, as recently documented in the New York Times.

One of my favorite Hilderbrand novels is 28 Summers, published in 2020 and reviewed briefly on this blog. 28 Summers borrows its structure from Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year, with two lovers meeting secretly each summer, starting in 1993, on Nantucket. You can take 28 breezy seaside vacations with these characters.

I don’t pretend that my take on Beach Reads is definitive. Some readers will say that a Beach Read is any work of fiction that they save for reading on vacation. They pack the titles that they’ve been anxious to read but haven’t had time for during the rest of the year. Fair enough. Other readers love to settle in under that sun umbrella with a good mystery or thriller that provides page-turnability similar to that of a Beach Read. In any case, if you borrow a Beach Read from your local library, try to keep it out of the water!

Here are reviews of three Beach Reads that I recommend.

Rock the Boat     Beck Dorey-Stein     (2021)  Hallmark movies often feature an unhappy single person who leaves the big city for a quaint small town and finds love very unexpectedly. Take this trope and cross it with a Beach Read and a Reunion Romance, and you get Rock the Boat. When public relations exec Kate Campbell gets dumped by her wealthy Manhattan boyfriend of 12 years, she quits her job and moves back in with her parents in the small coastal tourist town of Sea Point, New Jersey. This is a major reversal for Kate, especially since New Yorkers really look down on New Jersey (even though those same New Yorkers flock to the Jersey Shore every summer).

In Sea Point, Kate reunites with two of her childhood friends—Ziggy Miller, a local plumber, and Miles Hoffman, a real-estate developer who has himself returned to Sea Point to re-engage with the family business. The past mistakes of Kate, Ziggy, and Miles are resurrected in brief flashbacks, and several sub-plots weave through the narrative. Don’t worry about keeping track of all the minor characters. Just watch Kate as she reinvents her life.

Summer of ’69     Elin Hilderbrand     (2019)  [A revised repost from this blog.] In the Author’s Note at the back of Summer of ’69, Elin Hilderbrand explains that she was born on July 17, 1969, six minutes before her twin brother entered the world. Fifty years on, Elin revisits the momentous events of the summer that she herself was born. She includes in her fictional narrative such actual occurrences as the spellbinding Apollo 11 mission to the moon; the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick that derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes; the fabled rock ‘n’ roll encampment at Woodstock; and the continuing slaughter of troops and civilians in Vietnam.

Hilderbrand’s main characters are the Foley-Levin family, who summer on Nantucket, the small island off Cape Cod. Blair, the eldest of the offspring, is recently married and is diagnosed late in pregnancy as carrying twins. Kirby, the rebel sister, takes a job on the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard, where she is almost a witness in the Kopechne/Kennedy case. Tiger, the only son, is off fighting in Vietnam, driving his mother to drink. And 13-year-old Jessie, the youngest, gets invited to Woodstock. Hilderbrand takes us back to 1969 in all its glory and horror through the experiences of this family. Some of the plot twists will be obvious to any avid reader of mystery novels, and a few anachronisms crop up. But, despite the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Summer of ’69 is mostly brisk and cheerful, with wrap-ups of most of the plot lines by the final pages. You can have that second margarita and still be able to follow the story.

Endless Summer     Elin Hilderbrand     (2022)  This collection of nine short prequels and sequels to several of Hilderbrand’s novels is for her diehard followers. Of special note are the sequel novellas, Summer of ’79 and Summer of ’89, that are included. These novellas follow the Foley-Levin clan ten years out and twenty years out from the novel Summer of ’69, with emphasis on the various romantic entanglements that were introduced in the novel and that play out in sometimes unexpected ways as the decades unfold. The pop culture references that Hilderbrand tosses in to her narrative to set the decade can be heavy at times, but I love epilogues, and these two novellas are, in a way, highly extended epilogues.

Pandemic Reads, Part Two

In my last post, I reviewed historical fiction and mysteries that I’ve read during the pandemic. I’d also like to recommend some non-mystery novels about contemporary life.

Monogamy    Sue Miller (2020) When the gregarious owner of an independent bookstore dies, his widow accidentally discovers his infidelity. Sue Miller explores the complex ties of marriage, family, friendship, and career with great subtlety.

Indelicacy    Amina Cain (2020) This short novel (almost a novella) tells the story of a young woman who is lifted out of poverty by marriage to a wealthy man. Although it seems that her dreams of having the leisure to become a writer have come true, the reality of her everyday life is quite different from her expectations.

Writers and Lovers    Lily King (2020) And here’s another woman with authorial ambitions: Casey, a 31-year-old server at a restaurant in Harvard Square who lives frugally and spends every spare moment writing a novel. She also meets some pretty wacky boyfriends. As a former server myself, I loved the restaurant scenes.

Christmas in Austin    Benjamin Markovits (2019) Three generations of the Essinger family gather in Texas for the holidays, and all the usual Christmas traditions and stresses become manifest. You may find yourself identifying with one of the fourteen members of this ensemble cast. (This book is a sequel to A Weekend in New York but stands alone just fine.)

28 Summers    Erin Hilderbrand (2020) For chick lit escapism, it doesn’t get better than Erin Hilderbrand. This offering borrows its structure from Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year, with the two lovers meeting secretly each summer, starting in 1993, on Hilderbrand’s beloved Nantucket Island. You can take lots of breezy seaside vacations with them. I’ve also reviewed Hilderbrand’s Summer of ‘69.

The Geometry of Holding Hands    Alexander McCall Smith (2020)

This 13th entry in the Isabel Dalhousie series finds the Edinburgh-based philosopher again trying to solve ethical questions among her friends and family, all the while editing an academic journal. The interactions of Isabel and her husband, Jamie, are, as usual, unabashedly romantic. Check out my review of the series as a whole and of the 12th entry specifically.