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Eagle Point Beach, Delaware – Past & Present Day Jewel Stone is a bestselling author with a loving and supportive husband, Roman. However, they are going through some financial difficulties. She needs to write a follow-up novel to her bestseller, while her husband is out of work and struggling to find a new job. Her publisher has given her advances and allowed her to stall while she deals with writer’s block. Then one day, Jewel receives a fateful call. Her old (and now estranged) friend, Shelby Andrews, calls her. She needs her because she has been in an accident. Can Jewel come? Shelby has lost her memory of the past ten years due to the accident. All she can remember is her friendship with Jewel, so it’s no wonder that she called her. Jewel arrives and is hesitant at first, not realizing that Shelby doesn’t remember their breakup. It’s shameful because the two once had a close relationship that included a shared secret. Shelby soon learns that she has a nineteen-year-old daughter, Lacey, whom she adopted around the time period when she lost her memory. Could there be a connection? As Shelby and Jewel reconnect, it soon becomes clear that the elephant in the room is what happened in the summer of 2005. Meanwhile, Lacey is spending the summer elsewhere, searching for her birth parents… A SUMMER FOR THE BOOKS is a thoughtful and engaging romance about shared pasts, shattered relationships, and reuniting old friends. On the outside, Jewel seemingly has it all with a writing career and an adoring husband. He doesn’t realize that her hit novel is semi-biographical. We don’t learn until well into this tale as to why Jewel and Shelby argued and split up. Their friendship had lasted years, and suddenly it splintered. We do know that in the spring of 2006, an infant baby was abandoned at a bookstore at Eagle Point Beach. It turns out it’s the same bookstore that Shelby now owns. The baby is around the same age as Lacey. Is she the abandoned baby? A lot of secrets are being kept, and it led to Shelby and Jewel’s breakup. Readers will soon suspect there is a connection between what happened twenty years ago, the abandoned baby, Lacey’s adoption, and the friction between Shelby and Jewel. A SUMMER FOR THE BOOKS shifts from the present day, back to 2005, and then to other years. We also see a deleted scene from Jewel’s bestselling book and Shelby’s journals. It all provides insight into what was going on in the girls’ lives back then. Meanwhile, Shelby is recovering from her accident and hoping she can remember the last ten years. Lacey remains on her beach excursion with her best friend as they have fun and do some investigative work to try and figure out who her birth parents are. There are plenty of red herrings sprinkled throughout the story to give clues that provide the answers to the questions brought up in the story. Will it end up happily for Jewel, Shelby, and Lacey? You will have to read this to find out. If you love a tale that tantalizes your curiosity and pulls you into the lives of the characters, then you won’t want to miss A SUMMER FOR THE BOOKS. Patti Fischer |
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A SUMMER FOR THE BOOKS – Michelle Lindo-Rice