A cozy, feel-good beach read

Nora Bridge had what appeared to be the American dream - a devoted husband, two loving daughters, and a quaint beachhouse on Summer Island. Yet one day she turned her back on them all and vanished into thin air.

A decade later her youngest daughter Ruby finds herself grappling with the heartbreaking legacy of her mother's selfishness. Stuck in the spin cycle of financial and emotional debt, Ruby is listless, angry and desperate to make a buck. After Nora, ironically a nationally beloved radio advice show host of "Family First," becomes the center of a scandal, Ruby decides to make a quick buck by writing a tell-all roast about her absentee mother for a sleazy tabloid.

Just when life couldn't get worse for poor Nora, she wreaks her car in an alcohol-induced haze, rendering herself incapacitated in a wheelchair. Alone and helpless, she's left to rely on the one person who despises her the most: Ruby.

Guilted into taking care of her down-trodden mother at her childhood home in Summer Island, Ruby decides to maximize her quality time with mother dearest by writing her tell-all. But when her anger ebbs and forviness fights its way to the surface, she sruggles with the moral dilemma of cashing in on her mother's scandal or killing the story and letting her mother back in her heart.

Lessons of redemption and second chances are also infused in the two subplots: one a romance between Ruby and Dean, an old boyfriend who she ditched after her mother left, and another involving Dean's dying brother with only days left to make peace with his broken family. Conveniently they're all summering on the island and rebuilding their relationships.

Brimming with sentiments of forgiveness and unconditional love, the book reads like a lengthy episode of a Lifetime movie under the influence of "Delilah after Dark." Get out those boxes of Kleenex ladies, this one is a surefired tearjerker.

learning to forgive

Summer Island is a cautionary tale of what can happen when we can't disclose our truths to those we love. When hurt, people assume the worse both about themselves, and about the ones they've trusted to never hurt them. Kristen Hannah builds complex characters suffering from wounds they can't seem to recover from. Only through hard work, and hard truths can they finally com together to become whole through love.

Hannah might write what would be considered `Chic-Lit" but there's nothing formulaic about the characters who come to life in her novels. They love, they hate, they bleed, and they have to pay for their mistakes and hope for forgiveness just as we do in real life.

In her novel Summer Island, set in the gorgeous San Juan Islands of Washington state, we have the tale of the modern-day `Dr. Laura', Nora Bridges who left her island home when her daughters were 16 and 18, without explaining why. When nude pictures of her with a man other than her husband appear on a tabloid magazine, Nora's career goes into a tailspin. The public that once loved and trusted her now wants to know every sordid detail of her fall from grace.

The younger of her two daughters, a floundering comic, is paid to write a `tell-all' about the mother she hates. The second daughter, supposedly happily married, shows signs of following in her mother's footsteps.

Throw in a love story between childhood sweethearts, and a friend dying of cancer, and you the makings of a fine tearjerker loaded with substance. Kristen Hannah always delivers and for me, never disappoints.
When I Dream

A Must Read

This story was easy to fall into. You really feel part of the story and Hannah makes it easy to fall for these characters and really root for them. This is much more than a story about forgiveness. It is a story about redemption and love and lost love found.

Schmaltzy, Lightweight

Schmaltzy. Though it's women's fiction, and not romance, it's very lightweight. Hannah does orchestrate her material well, withholding information for maximum impact, but it doesn't always make sense. Nora Bridge is a radio advice star, until nude photos of her surface with a lover taken prior to her divorce. Problem magnified because she is a holier-than-thou advocate of family and morality. Her original newspaper column, NORA KNOWS BEST, says it--smug at the least; and if all her advice is to be self-sacrificial to family, wouldn't readers and listeners stop asking for it, knowing already what Nora is going to say? Nora herself left her husband and two daughters around a decade ago, causing one daughter, Ruby, sixteen at the time, to obsess on her abandonment, hating and blaming her mother. Yet it develops, quite a way into the book, that Nora asked both her daughters to come with her. Ruby angrily refused. Illogical then than Ruby blames her mother for their separation, and never lets go of her fury. Illogical, too, that Nora would ask the girls to come with her, when she knew where she was going, the girls could not go with her--also withheld from the reader until still later in the book. There is the subplot of a thwarted romance between Ruby and her childhood sweetheart, and another tragic note about the sweetheart's brother. Ruby is less than sympathetic because she constantly wallows in sudsy resentment and over-wrought emotion about her mother leaving her. At sixteen and up, you'd think there might be some other emphasis in this girl's mind. Like getting on with her life. Asked to write a magazine article about her "horrible" mother when the scandal about Nora breaks, the reader sees early on that what Ruby writes will be the solution, reconciliation with her mother, as the tenor of the article isn't Mommy Dearest at all. Kristin Hannah must have her fans, but to me the book was a waste of time; and it served to convince me more of Hannah's work isn't anything I want to read.

Astounding! An adventure of forgiveness...

I am totally and completely captured by Kristin Hannah's capturing the intricate emotions of each and every character and bringing them to life that you recognize these very people in your everyday life. The story lines of her books are so vivid and woven in each and every detail is the feelings and emotions that many try to deny ever feeling. She is quite explicit in her depiction of each and every one. Summer Island is an emotionally charged adventure for the reader. Ruby's hatred of her mother because of feeling abandoned when her mother walked out one day was quickly changed once she was able to spend some quality time with her mother and get to really know who she was. She never knew her. It was an amazing discovery for her to find out her mother was never who she actually thought she was. Just as Dean and Eric who were brothers had stopped communicating because Eric revealed he was gay, so did Ruby and her mother and all the characters were out of touch. Some of the best parts of the book that share the magnificent concepts of the authors thinking were simply amazing and I want to share a few.

Page 104....
The truth doesn't go away just because you shut your eyes had been another of her mother's favorite sayings.

How profound this one statement was and it certainly describes the way most people try to cope with their worlds today.

As Nora's doctor advised her to open up to Ruby her response was such.

Page 125....
She sighed wearily. The thought of opening herself like a rotting flower to her beloved daughter was more than she could bear. " I just want to see her smile at me. That's all. Just once and I could carry that image forever. I don't expect her to like me,,,let alone love me."

Ruby's feelings were clearly defined as she wrote....

Page 132...
I hate my mother. That seems like a pretty harsh statement, I know. We're taught in childhood not to use the word "hate" because it represents a blight on our soul, perhaps even a karmic misalignment. But silencing a word doesn't eliminate its meaning. It's not like I hate her for no reason, or even for a stupid , petty reason. She's earned my contempt. To explain, I have to open the door to my mother's and my life, and welcome you in as friends.

As you can see the way Kristin writes is so explanatory and without any misunderstandings. Ruby had acted out and was reacting to her mothers desertion while her mothers simply could not cope with everything that had taken place and was just hiding from it all, not wanting to face any of it. Ruby was quite a self-centered gal and could not see past herself until she met her mother face to face again, then she could not deny the love that her mothers had given her all her years of growing up. It all came back to heal their relationship because they both opened up themselves honestly with each other and shared who they truly were. The mother held painful and private things inside refusing to share them, thinking she was protecting the ones she loved all the while sabotaging the relationships that meant the most for her. When Ruby learned that her father had never once told her mother that he loved her, and he had affairs for years that she knew nothing about, things began to shift in her thinking as she herself could not bring herself to say those very same words to anyone let alone give herself to another completely.

Nora the mother talks about the loneliness one can feel in a family when the lack of love is present and how breaking up a family irrevocably destroys lives in a letter to one of her readers. She also explains how unforgiveness destroys ones spirit and how letting go frees you.

When Ruby realized that her mother did not leave her for fame and fortune but simply because she was human, could not handle things as they were and the man she loved had broken her heart her whole attitude toward her mother changed.

Page 265...
I know how it feels when someone you love stops loving you back, It's a kind of mini-death that breaks something inside of you. I think I'm afraid to love her, even the tiniest bit. The hurt she caused me is so deep that my bones have grown around it. I wonder perhaps who I am without it-

Page 290...
Ruby writes...Maybe the truth of who we are lies hidden in all the shades of grey that everyone talks about.

Page 292...
"What's wrong with this family that we can't talk about anything that matters?"

In the end, Ruby admitted to becoming the architect of her own pain and something inside began to change once she faced the facts about herself and her mother. She realized that she could not live her life trying to not hurt anyone because if she thought that way she would never end up touching anyone.

Ruby's thoughts eventually were...
Page375...
There's no substitute for talking to the people you love. thinking about them, dreaming about them, wishing things were different...all these are the beginning. But someone has to make the first move.

I absolutely love Kristin Hannah and have became a fan because of the way she writes. I normally never read fiction but have shifted over to reading hers because they are such a wonderful journey through the emotions of others. Be sure and read this one, it is a keeper!