Secrets in Summer

April 15, 2017
A young divorcee embarks on a journey of self-discovery during one eventful summer.As Thayer (The Island House, 2016, etc.) opens her tale, 30-year-old Darcy Cotterill is blindsided when her ex-husband arrives in Nantucket for the summer. Not only has her ex, Boyz, brought his new wife and her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, to the island where Darcy lives year-round, they have rented the house immediately behind hers for the summer. As a woman who spends much time in her backyard garden, Darcy quickly learns more than she wanted to know about Boyz's new family. It seems that Boyz and his wife spend precious little time supervising Willow, who has gotten involved with one of the island's suspected drug dealers. Darcy takes matters into her own hands and befriends Willow, asserting some authority over the girl to protect her from harm. She introduces Willow to their other summer neighbors, who she hopes will be better influences. Mimi, an elderly woman who reminds Darcy of her own recently deceased grandmother, is renting the house to one side of Darcy's, and Susan, the frazzled mother of three rambunctious boys, is renting another. Before long, this group becomes a committed foursome of friends. Under Darcy's influence, Willow begins helping with storytime at the library instead of dabbling in drugs, babysits Susan's frenetic kids, and acts as a companion to the elderly Mimi. As the story progresses, Darcy lands in a few confusing romantic situations of her own, and she's thankful to have these women, young and old, to help her navigate. Full of rich details about life on Nantucket, this breezy tale is at once nostalgic and hopeful. Although the prose is a bit bland, the story is filled with sweet moments of unlikely female connections. An easily digestible, warmhearted tale of eye-opening friendships.

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May 15, 2017

At age ten Darcy finally found a permanent home full of love (and books) with her grandmother on the island of Nantucket. As an adult, her college studies, and then her husband kept her away, but after getting divorced and then inheriting her gorgeous childhood home, Darcy has returned. She's enjoying her job as a children's librarian and dating a handsome new guy. Then her ex-husband rents the house next door, and she gets tangled up in his life along with the lives of the summer visitors. Darcy and the new neighbors she befriends have to navigate some tough situations, and she suddenly has to choose among three love interests. However, with two of the men trying to force themselves on her and one issuing an ultimatum for her to choose him or her house, some readers might think she could do much better than any of them. Darcy does select one and gets her happily ever after, but a little less rationalizing of their bad behavior would have made it a much sweeter ending. VERDICT Thayer's (The Island House) latest beach read once again captures the allure of Nantucket but stumbles a bit with the romance.--Melissa DeWild, BookOps, New York P.L.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2017
After her marriage into a picture-perfect family ends in an ugly divorce, librarian Darcy Cotterill retreats to her late grandmother's home on Nantucket, settling into a routine as a year-round resident of the popular vacation spot. She rebuilds her life with new friends, a great job, and a boyfriend, but her past comes back to haunt her when her ex-husband unknowingly rents a nearby house for the summer. Their homes are separated by a hedge, allowing Darcy to hear the goings-on in her ex's yardincluding an encounter between his stepdaughter Willow and a local bad boy. Darcy steps in, and she soon finds that she and Willow are kindred spirits: bookish types who feel lost in their boisterous and free-spirited families. Together with Mimi, an elderly neighbor with a wicked sense of humor, and Susan, the woman next door whose marriage seems to be falling apart, the women spend a memorable summer forgiving the people who have wronged them and celebrating the power of friendship. Thayer's beachside novel brims with themes that women's-fiction readers love, and the plot skims important issuesinfidelity, fear of commitment, griefwhile maintaining its focus on Darcy's personal growth and the intergenerational friendship between the four women(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)