Weyenberg Library Blog

Who wouldn’t like to take the whole summer off and spend it on Nantucket Island?  In The Island House, Courtney was able to do just that.  It all started when she was in college and her roommate, Robin, invited her to stay with her family while she worked on the island.  That was eleven years ago and she returned to the island every summer.  She is now a university professor in Kansas and she is still drawn to the island.  Her life in Kansas is as different as it can be from that on Nantucket.  Two different lifestyles and two different men.  Summer is back and she’s drawn once again to the island not just out of habit, but also to figure out just what she wants out of life.

If anyone can write about Nantucket, it’s Elin Hilderbrand.  This comes across once again in her newest book, Here’s to Us.  In this story you get to meet the whole family of the recently deceased, Chef Deacon Thorpe.  His three wives have two things in common.  They all loved and married him and they all detest one another.  While Deacon was married to his first wife he purchased a ramshackle cottage on Nantucket.  This place was very special to him so it would only seem logical that when he died he left it to all three wives.  You can only imagine what it would be like to have all three of them gathered together in a very small cottage with one bathroom as they sort through their life with Deacon and decide what to do with the cottage.

Little Beach Street Bakery takes us to a little island off the Cornish coast.  Polly Waterford has gone there to escape from a bad relationship.  She needs a diversion to stop thinking about the past so she takes up her hobby of making bread.  The more she kneads the bread to get her frustrations out the better her breads turn out.  Soon the whole island can smell the bread as it is baking.  A hobby turns into a passion and a passion turns into her own bakery.  You get to meet all the people of this quaint little resort town including the handsome beekeeper who may be interested in more than just selling honey.  Should you like this book you may also want to read Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery.

Our next island is Fire Island in The Last Summer of You and Me.  Every summer Alice and Riley return to their family beach home on Fire Island.  For as long as they can remember, summers have been shared with their friend Paul.  Paul returns this summer having missed the last three summers. It should be the same as always but some things have changed, including their feelings for Paul.  As the summer unfolds with changes and secrets, how will their relationship with each other hold up?

In We Were Liars, Cady vacations on a private island that her grandfather owns on Cape Cod.  She is joined by her mother, two aunts, two cousins, and a friend of her aunt’s.  Cady is experiencing crippling headaches from an accident that happened two years ago.  She’s trying to remember, trying to put the pieces of that summer together, but she can’t and everyone around her refuses to help her with the puzzle.  What possibly could have happened that no one will talk about it?

The Miracle on Monhegan Island is told through the eyes of the family dog, Ned.  Well sort of the family dog.  Ned was stolen by one of the Monahan family members and given as a gift to someone else in the family.  Ned’s new family is about as dysfunctional as a family can get.  Their story is about obsession, religious fervor, and mental illness.  While thought-provoking, the story unfolds in a touching and humorous way.

So if an island isn’t in your immediate future, happy reading.

Book covers courtesy of Easicat.