TUESDAY SPARKS: “THE SUMMER HOUSE”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s featured book is a recent download.  The Summer House, by Hannah McKinnon, is a  warm-hearted novel that is perfect for fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Mary Alice Monroe.

 

Intro:  (Clem)

Something was not right.  Throughout the night, driving spring rains had battered against the windowpanes, and flashes of lightning illuminated their bedroom in tumultuous bursts.   But now the house was eerily silent.  Turning over, she reached for the alarm clock on her bedside table:  7:15.  She’d never get the kids ready for the school bus on time.  Groaning, she slid back beneath the warmth of the down comforter.

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Teaser:  (Paige)

Paige tossed the shopping bags on the bed and flopped down among them.  She’d spent too much money in town, but it seemed like the only way to guarantee some time with Emma.  David set his book down and looked over at her, bemused (46%).

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Synopsis:  When Flossy Merrill summons her children to the beloved family beach house to celebrate their father’s eightieth birthday, both cherished memories and long-kept secrets come to light in this charming and lyrical novel from the author of The Lake Season and Mystic Summer.

Flossy Merrill has managed to—somewhat begrudgingly—gather her three ungrateful grown children from their dysfunctional lives for a summer reunion at the family’s Rhode Island beach house. Clementine, her youngest child and a young mother of two small children, has caused Flossy the most worry after enduring a tragically life-altering year. But Samuel and his partner Evan are not far behind in their ability to alarm: their prospective adoption search has just taken a heart-wrenching turn. Only Paige, the eldest of the headstrong Merrill clan, is her usual self: arriving precisely on time with her well-adapted teens. Little does her family know that she, too, is facing personal struggles of her own.

No matter. With her family finally congregated under one seaside roof, Flossy is determined to steer her family back on course even as she prepares to reveal the fate of the summer house that everyone has thus far taken for granted: she’s selling it. The Merrill children are both shocked and outraged and each returns to memories of their childhoods at their once beloved summer house—the house where they have not only grown up, but from which they have grown away. With each lost in their respective heartaches, Clementine, Samuel, and Paige will be forced to reconsider what really matters before they all say goodbye to a house that not only defined their summers, but, ultimately, the ways in which they define themselves. 

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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