Abandoned by Booklikes

I wish that I had liked this book as much as I did Cat and Jemima J. In fact I am pretty disappointed that the full length novel was not as great. There was actually no follow-up from that short story to this feature length book. And there was a weird segue that showcased the main character's Cat's mother that really didn't fit with the book at all. I think if that had been cut and stayed focused on Cat the whole book would have worked. The ending I think was supposed to be uplifting, but I felt cheated as a reader to not get a final scene together with the character we had been following and get to see how things were going to work out. Heck even an epilogue would have worked.

Summer Secrets goes back and forth in time with us following the character of Cat Coombs. Cat is a journalist and though she drinks a bit, thinks that she has everything under control. Readers quickly find out that Cat only thinks she has things under control. We see her in 2014 when she's several months sober, living with her daughter and divorced. We then go back in time to 1998 to see Cat when she was in the midst of realizing that she was an alcoholic and trying to stop for the first time ever. She receives news at the same time that the man she thought was her real father her entire life was actually not her father. Finding out that he is an American and lives in Nantucket, Cat travels there to meet him and two half sisters she never knew she had.

The character of Cat really didn't arouse any sort of feeling in me at all. No pity or disdain for how out of control her life had gotten. If anything I felt like I was reading a paint by numbers portrait of a woman who had a drinking problem who in due course would fix it. I think my main issue is that I have read other authors who have tackled this subject much better for me, like Amy Hatvany's Best Kept Secret. For me, it felt like Summer Secrets glossed over how bad drinking Cat's drinking was. At one point she wakes up in bed and not sure where she is, but of course she waked up in a bed of a nice man that didn't try anything, that she feels herself instantly attracted to. Her addiction to alcohol just didn't feel real. Neither did her sobriety when it came. I think as a reader if we had gotten to see how bad things really were and felt them and got to see her struggle than I could have believed it. I think that's the problem when trying to tackle such a serious subject matter and then make it fit in with contemporary romance.

The other characters in this book are paper thin by the way. Once again it felt like we glossed over certain characters like Sam (one of Cat's best friends) who was disparaging towards her not drinking anymore. Cat mentions that she rid herself of her other hard partying friends, but she doesn't ditch the guy who acts like she doesn't have a problem and asks her if she wants a drink? Are you serious?

Another character I had a hard time with was Cat's mother. We know she suffered from severe depression and that her mother obviously had an affair with another man, but still stayed married to Cat's father. Well at one point Cat goes on that even though she didn't have a father who loved her, she did have a mother who loved her. This is hundreds of pages later when we find out that Cat's mother couldn't even get out of bed most days and stayed hidden until her husband came home. Frankly I wish that we had gotten a scene, any scene between these two women with Cat's mother acknowledging that the man who she thought was her father's coldness may have come from him realizing that his wife had cheated on him and that the daughter he was raising was not his. It was said by Cat's father how she had to be a changeling since she looked nothing like him and only had his wife's eyes and teeth.

Cat's ex husband Jason was apparently set to default attractive male and there was never any attempt to provide any insight to the guy at all until the end. I honestly didn't care for this character based on how he behaved in this book. And I wish that we were able to see what made him so wonderful.

The writing reads like many of Jane Green's later novels which makes me sad. I had hope with Cat and Jemima J that we really were headed back to one of her more chick-lit type books taking place in London. Unfortunately most of the book took place in Nantucket and I am so sick of reading about that location it is not even funny. Are there no other beaches anywhere?

The flow also got messed up due to at one point we had an aside throw in to showcase Cat's mother when she went home to visit her aunt in Nantucket. We get to see her fall instantly in lust with a man and we readers of course realize that is Cat's father. The whole meet and aftermath really didn't work since there was no there there with the character who was Cat's real father.

The ending was left on a happy note, but honestly, it didn't feel earned at all once you get through all of the pages of ups and downs that came before it.