Summer Island

Rating:
Summary: Nice heartwarming story
Review: This is not the 1st book I've read by Hannah. I loved On Mystic Lake and Between Sisters but this was just so-so. It was boring at times and predictable. It's a good story though about mothers and daughters and when relationships go astray. Try it..you might like it.

Rating:
Summary: Boring and Same Old, Same Old
Review: I usually read thrillers, when this book was recommended, I was a bit apprehensive. Then, once I started, I couldn't stop. I loved every one of the characters, I loved thier lives, and I loved their personalities. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. This book will stike a chord in the heart of all who read it. I can't stop thanking my friend for suggesting it to me. I think that Kristin Hannah did more than a marvelous job with this book and I can't wait to read her again. Reading this book was the best time I have spent in a long time. I laughed, I cried, I loved, all with the characters. I am telling you the truth when I tell you that you will love this book. Trust me.

Amanda

Rating:
Summary: Problematic Summer read
Review: "Summer Island," although it has its good points, is a deeply flawed effort from Kristin Hannah.

Let me explain. First, it's a very good story about a mother and daughter bonding after ten years of broken communication. I bought into that part.

But it's the externals that were a problem for me. Nora Bridge is a radio talk show host, something like Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and talks a lot about family values. Her radio listeners know she's divorced, and has two grown daughters.

Thing is, they're about to find out that, when she was younger (and still married), she had some semi-nude photos taken of her. This act of rebellion shows up to bite her years later, and she flees from reporters trying to make their names on the scandal.

Ruby Bridge is a disillusioned, highly immature woman of 27. She's been most recently a waitress, but thinks of herself as an out of work comedienne. She's a good writer, but not so good at delivering the goods as a comic. But then, she gets two big breaks; a shot on TV (a show like "Politically Incorrect") as a comic and sitting on a panel, then gets a chance to write a tell-all about her mother from a major magazine (something like "The New Yorker"). She takes it, as she just lost her job at the restaurant, and really, she hates her mother anyway.

Thing is, she goes to take care of her mother after her mother has a car accident (drinking and driving, no less), and breaks her leg. They go back to the ancestral home (not sure why they still have it; Ms. Hannah did account for it in her book, but I can't remember why just now) on one of the islands off the coast of Washington state; this is designed to keep Nora out of the public eye while she starts to heal.

Thing is, Ruby's exposé must be delivered soon, and yet she finds out more and more about her mother. Things she had never expected. Things she really should have known, but thrust away (her father was an alcoholic, and cheated on her mother).

Really, it's the more "minor" characters that carried this book in my opinion. First, the dying Eric was a great character; he knew what life was like, had lived it to the fullest, and wasn't afraid of dying (despite the fact that he was under 30). This was realistic; I've been around people with a terminal disease before, and it doesn't matter how old they are chronologically. All of them want to be released from their body, because it hurts.

Second, the other sister, Caroline, is a much better person than Ruby. She, too, has a deeply troubled life; her husband cheats on her, and she's extremely unhappy. She tries to hold it together by being overly obsessive about her appearance and how she raises her kids, but it's obvious from the first time she shows up in the novel that she's very, very hurt.

Ruby's romance with Eric's brother Dean is forgettable; a few decent sex scenes, then they decide to marry. Why? Because Ms. Hannah needed some romance, I guess; wish she would have found someone to throw at Nora Bridge, who deserved it far more than Ruby.

And Caroline's life stinks, too. Nora tells Caroline to go back to her husband in not so many words, despite him being a womanizer and a liar. This makes no sense; telling her to try to work it out _while separated_ would have made more sense, as Caroline's husband needed a whole lot of counseling and consciousness raising before he'd change. This part took half a star away from the rating, because it was not realistic at all in my opinion.

The second thing that took a star away was this. Look, I'm a writer; I know how long it takes to write opinions, current events articles, and longer factual pieces, as well as novels.

To be blunt, Ms. Hannah's characterization of getting a magazine piece, writing it _while researching is in process_, and delivering it in only ten days, was completely unbelievable. It does not fly; there is no way it could be done.

No way in the world.

Also, I have a hard time buying the fact that Ruby would get big bucks to do the exposé in the first place. I can believe _little_ bucks, but big bucks? From a first-time author? From someone who's known to hate her mother? Not particularly believable, in my opinion.

Finally, the last thing that took a star away was this. There was a very strange and offputting flash-forward section towards the end of the book. In this flash-forward, Ruby talks about "ten years of affluence" (when she's always been broke -- one reason she took the money for the tell-all exposé is because of the amount of problems she'd had paying her bills), and her dying friend Eric is _still living_, ten years down the road. However, without further ado, after about a page and a half of this confusing nonsense, we're back to present day, where Eric is still dying of end-stage cancer (and he _does_ die, even further confusing the issue), Ruby's still broke, and she's wondering if she'll ever marry Dean after all.

This made absolutely no sense, and although it may not be Ms. Hannah's fault (the editors or typesetters could have screwed this up somehow), it was something that totally distracted me from an otherwise engaging read. Plus, it got my hopes up that Eric, who I liked more than any other character in the book, was going to live after all through a miracle. Instead, he dies, and Ruby marries Dean -- something that is a total anticlimax from my standpoint, as Ruby and Dean aren't anywhere near as good of people as Eric was.

Because of these flaws, although I agree with the Amazon main review that says "Summer Island" is a great read for mothers and daughters, I believe it is too problematical to recommend.

If you want to read Ms. Hannah's work, go read "When Lightning Strikes," which is much better than this. I feel this is a worthy, but extremely flawed, book. Therefore, I'm giving it 2.5 stars on the head -- and I'll let you make up your own mind.