Review: Summer Secrets by Jane Green

Summer Secrets by Jane Green

Published: June 23, 2015

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Format: via BookSparks

Challenges: SRC 2015

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis

June, 1998: At twenty seven, Catherine Coombs, also known as Cat, is struggling. She lives in London, works as a journalist, and parties hard. Her lunchtimes consist of several glasses of wine at the bar downstairs in the office, her evenings much the same, swigging the free booze and eating the free food at a different launch or party every night. When she discovers the identity of the father she never knew she had, it sends her into a spiral. She makes mistakes that cost her the budding friendship of the only women who have ever welcomed her. And nothing is ever the same after that.

June, 2014: Cat has finally come to the end of herself. She no longer drinks. She wants to make amends to those she has hurt. Her quest takes her to Nantucket, to the gorgeous summer community where the women she once called family still live. Despite her sins, will they welcome her again? What Cat doesn’t realize is that these women, her real father’s daughters, have secrets of their own. As the past collides with the present, Cat must confront the darkest things in her own life and uncover the depths of someone’s need for revenge.

My Thoughts

This book is amazing! This book focuses on addiction and how it not only affects your life but those all around you. Summer Secrets has a couple of storylines going on but nothing that’s too much or too confusing.

We meet Cat when she is young and partying and drinking way too much. She meets a nice guy one night and wakes up hungover at his place not knowing what happened and discovers he is a recovering alcoholic. He encourages her to go to meetings and she does but she doesn’t do it for herself but for him. One cannot truly get help unless they want it you can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do especially when they don’t think there is a problem.

We see how Cat’s childhood was growing up with a mom who was depressed and a father who wasn’t really a father. One day a few months after her father’s death her mom confesses he wasn’t her dad but that her father was an American she spent a romantic summer with back home. She thinks this is her chance to truly have a family and sets off to reunite with them in hopes of building a real family. She learns that her father also has a drinking problem and maybe it might be in her genes. She instantly connects to one sister and one night her drinking might have caused the one thing she wants so much to be lost forever. Not until years later while Cat is losing her husband and daughter does she decide she can’t live like this forever. She decides to become sober for herself and while in the process she must make amends with those she hurt the most. She must go back to America and reconnect with her sisters and ask for forgiveness for the hurtful things she did. While she thinks everything is forgiven she soon learns not everything is as is seems. Will she get what she came for or is revenge the ultimate payback?

This story was just so good! I felt so many emotions while reading; I hated then felt compassion for Cat. She was a true addict who loved her drinking more than anything else. But like they say you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. This is a story of love, forgiveness and surviving. It gives you hope that anyone who has gone through so much in life can change, if you really want to and put all your soul and heart into it.