Summer's Child

Bantam Books

Summer's Child
Luanne Rice
2005

The Summary
"On the first day of summer, Mara Jameson went out to water her garden--and she was never seen again.  Years after her disappearance, no one could forget the expectant mother whose glowing smile had captured the heart of everyone who'd known her:  Maeve Jameson, still mourning the loss of a granddaughter she had struggled to protect...Patrick Murphy, a dogged police detective obsessed with the vanished woman...and Lily Malone, drawn to the rugged beauty of the Nova Scotia coast and its promise of a new life.

"Here Lily hopes to raise her nine-year-old daughter, Rose, far from the pain and loss of the past.  Here she will meet a gifted scientist, Liam Neill, whose life is on a similar trajectory from heartbreak to hope.  And before the season is over, Lily will find the magic that exists in people we love best...the everyday miracles that can make the extraordinary happen anywhere."

The Good
Although I actually read Summer's Child several years ago, I enjoyed revisiting the rugged coast of Nova Scotia and a special rose garden on the New England coast.  Summer's Child does very well at giving readers a feel for the setting whether it's the conifer-covered coast of Nova Scotia with its rocky shores or the overflowing gardens of small Massachusetts cottages or the antiseptic whiteness of a hospital room.  You really get the feel for these locations, which I greatly appreciated.

I also thought the characters were well developed.  I really liked Lily who still struggles with her choices, who still fights her demons every day, and Liam stole my heart.  (I'll be honest, I had a bit of a crush on the big shark researcher.)  But I also thought the Rice did a wonderful job of characterizing children without making them seem unbelievable.

Take Rose, Lily's daughter, for instance.

Rose is only 9-years-old.  She's a sweet kid, but she's mature for her age because she's had to endure multiple heart surgeries to deal with her terrifying condition, Tetralogy of Fallot.  She doesn't sound like a little adult, but she doesn't sound too young for her age; she's just right, plus she's incredibly bright and incredibly sweet.  I just wanted to give her a hug and tell her it would all be alright.

Summer's Child is just a good wholesome book.  It sticks in my memory, because it's one of the very first purely romantic books I read.  It's very mild, very sweet, but it does a wonderful job of building characters and relationships to make them seem realistic and, more importantly, believable.  It reminded me a little of Jan Karon's Mitford series, in that it had stories laced with tragedy but, at it's core, it's about hope and love.

I liked it.  It gave me the warm fuzzies.

The Bad
No complaints, really.  It could get a little dull at times, especially when I really wanted to know what was happening with Rose.  But, otherwise, I enjoyed it all around.  It's not my favorite romantic novel, but it's definitely up there as one of my all-time favorite comfort books.

The Ugly
Abuse, plain and simple.

I really, really hated Ted.  I mean, he was absolutely despicable.  I disliked Edward, of course, but he was somewhat of a distant memory, a simmering hatred that lingered in the back of my mind.  Ted, however, incurred my active hatred since he was so recently in the past of both Marissa and her daughter, Jessica.

I'll just leave it at that, or else I'm going to spoil a plot twist.